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PARIS NIGHTS 

ARNOLD BENNETT 




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ARTISTIC EVENING (Pase /) 



PARIS NIGHTS 

AND OTHER IMPRESSIONS 
OF PLACES AND PEOPLE 



BY 

ARNOLD BENNETT 

AUTHOR OF THE OLD WIVES' TALE, CLAYHANGER 
YOUR UNITED STATES, ETC., ETC. 



With Illustrations by 
E. A. RICKARDS, F. R. I. B. A. 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK : : : : MCMXIII 



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s* 



COPYRIGHT, 1913 
BT GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



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©CLA354926 

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CONTENTS 

PARIS NIGHTS (1910) PAQE 

I. ARTISTIC EVENING 1 

II. THE VARIETES 13 

III. EVENING WITH EXILES .... 21 

IV. BOURGEOIS 38 

V. CAUSE CELEBRE 55 

VI. RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET AT THE 

OPERA 65 



LIFE IN LONDON (1911) 

I. THE RESTAURANT ..... 83 

II. BY THE RIVER 90 

III. THE CLUB 97 

IV. THE CIRCUS 103 

V. THE BANQUET 109 

VI. ONE OF THE CROWD 116 



ITALY (1910) 

I. NIGHT AND MORNING IN FLORENCE 127 

II. THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910 ... 148 

III. MORE ITALIAN OPERA .... 154 

v 



CONTENTS— (Continued) 

THE RIVIERA {1907) 

I. THE HOTEL TRISTE 163 

II. WAR! 168 

III. "MONTE" 174 

IV. A DIVERSION AT SAN REMO . . 184 



FONTAINEBLEAU (1904-1909) 

I. FIRST JOURNEY INTO THE FOREST 193 

II. SECOND JOURNEY INTO THE FOREST 199 

III. THE CASTLE GARDENS 203 

IV. AN ITINERARY 206 

SWITZERLAND (1909-1911) 

I. THE HOTEL ON THE LANDSCAPE . . 215 

II. HOTEL PROFILES 228 

III. ON A MOUNTAIN 234 



ENGLAND AGAIN (1907) 

I. THE GATE OF THE EMPIRE 

II. AN ESTABLISHMENT 

III. AMUSEMENTS . . 

IV. MANCHESTER . . 
V. LONDON . . . 

VI. INDUSTRY . . 



243 
249 
254 
259 
264 
269 



VJ 



CONTENTS— (Continued) 

THE MIDLANDS (1910-1911) 

I. THE HANBRIDGE EMPIRE . . .277 

II. THE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE . . .284 

III. FIRST VOYAGE TO THE ISLE OF MAN .290 

IV. THE ISLAND BOARDING-HOUSE . . 298 
V. TEN HOURS AT BLACKPOOL ... 305 



THE BRITISH HOME (1908) 

I. AN EVENING AT THE SMITHS' . . 317 

II. THE GREAT MANNERS QUESTION . 322 

III. SPENDING— AND GETTING VALUE . 327 

IV. THE PARENTS 332 

V. HARRY'S POINT OF VIEW ... 337 

VI. THE FUTURE 342 



STREETS ROADS AND TRAINS (1907-1909) 

I. IN WATLING STREET .... 349 

II. STREET TALKING 361 

III. ON THE ROAD 367 

IV. A TRAIN 374 

V. ANOTHER TRAIN 379 



vn 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

ARTISTIC EVENING Frontispiece ^ 

SOME JAPANESE MUSIC ON THE PLEYEL . 6 "" 

A NEW GUEST ARRIVED 10 ^ 

OPPOSITE THE "MOULIN ROUGE" . . . 18 • 

MONTMARTRE 22 " 

LA DAME DU COMPTOIR 30 ^ 

A BY-PRODUCT OF RUSSIAN POLITICS . . 40 ^ 

CAUSE CELEBRE 56 ^ 

THEY INSPIRE RESPECT 62 ^ 

LES SYLPHIDES 68 ^ 

FRAGILE AND BEAUTIFUL ODALISQUES . 70 ^ 

THE UNFORGETTABLE SEASON .... 72 ^ 

AN HONEST MISS 74 ^ 

SCHEHERAZADE 76 " 

CHIEF EUNUCH .... 78 ^ 

HE IS VERY DEFERENTIAL 84 v 

THE RESTAURANT 86^ 

THE BAND 88 v 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS— (Continued) 

PAGE 

IN THE EMBANKMENT GARDENS ... 92 

HE SLUMBERS ALONE 98 

THE CLUB OF THE FUTURE 

FLOWER WOMEN 

PICCADILLY CIRCUS 

FROM BAYSWATER TO THE CIRCUS . . . 

FROM SOUTH LONDON TO THE CIRCUS 

FROM WEST KENSINGTON TO THE CIRCUS 

WAITING FOR THE 'BUS AT THE CIRCUS . 

THE ORCHESTRA PROVES THAT ITS IN- 
STRUMENTS ARE REAL 

WHY DO THEY COME ? 

LESS UNHAPPY HERE THAN AT HOME . . 

A HUMAN BEING TALKING TO ANOTHER 
HUMAN BEING 

GAMBLING AT MONTE CARLO .... 

HOW BALZACIAN ! 

ON THE TERRACE OF THE CASTLE . . . 

GUARDS OF THE CASTLE 200 

THE CASTLE GARDENS 204 

ARBONNE 210: 

THE CATHEDRAL OF LARCHANT . . . . 212 v 

x 



102 


yy 


106 


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108 


s 


110 


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112 


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116 


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118 


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126 


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146 


\S 


150 


S 


166 


\S 


174 


S 


196 


\S 


198 


\S 



ILLUSTRATIONS— {Continued) 

PAGE 

THE LADY CLOG-DANCER 282 ^ 

THE VOYAGE 292 ^ 

THE ISLAND BOARDING HOUSE . . . . 298 •" 

YOU MEET SOME ONE ON THE STAIRS . . 300 ^ 

FONTAINEBLEAU 366 ^ 

THE LITTLE RIVER FUSAIN 370 ^ 

ASILE DE ST. SEVERIN 372 \s 

CHATEAU LANDON 374 ^ 



XI 



PARIS NIGHTS— 1910 



ARTISTIC EVENING 

The first invitation I ever received into a purely 
Parisian interior might have been copied out of a 
novel by Paul Bourget. Its lure was thus phrased : 
"Un peu de musique et d* agreables femmes" It 
answered to my inward vision of Paris. My expe- 
riences in London, which fifteen years earlier I had 
entered with my mouth open as I might have en- 
tered some city of Oriental romance, had, of course, 
done little to destroy my illusions about Paris, for 
the ingenuousness of the artist is happily inde- 
structible. Hence, my inward vision of Paris was 
romantic, based on the belief that Paris was es- 
sentially "different." Nothing more banal in Lon- 
don than a "little music," or even "some agreeable 
women"! But what a difference between a little 
music and un peu de musique! What an exciting 
difference between agreeable women and agreables 
femmes! After all, this difference remains nearly 
intact to this day. Nobody who has not lived in- 
timately in and with Paris can appreciate the unique 
savour of that word femmes. "Women" is a fine 
word, a word which, breathed in a certain tone, 
will make all men — even bishops, misogynists, and 
political propagandists — fall to dreaming! But 
femmes is yet more potent. There cling to it the 
associations of a thousand years of dalliance in 
a land where dalliance is passionately understood. 



2 PARIS NIGHTS 

The usual Paris flat, high up, like the top drawer 
of a chest of drawers ! No passages, but multitudi- 
nous doors. In order to arrive at any given room it 
is necessary to pass through all the others. I 
passed through the dining-room, where a servant 
with a marked geometrical gift had arranged a 
number of very small plates round the rim of a vast 
circular table. In the drawing-room my host was 
seated at a grand piano with a couple of candles in 
front of him and a couple of women behind him. 
See the light glinting on bits of the ebon piano, and 
on his face, and on their chins and jewels, and on the 
corner of a distant picture frame; and all the rest 
of the room obscure! He wore a jacket, negli- 
gently; the interest of his attire was dramatically 
centred in his large, limp necktie; necktie such as 
none but a hero could unfurl in London. A man 
with a very intelligent face, eager, melancholy (with 
a sadness acquired in the Divorce Court), wistful, 
appealing. An idealist ! He called himself a pub- 
licist. One of the women, a musical composer, had 
a black skirt and a white blouse; she was ugly but 
provocative. The other, all in white, was pretty 
and sprightly, but her charm lacked the perverse- 
ness which is expected and usually found in Paris; 
she painted, she versified, she recited. With the eye 
of a man who had sat for years in the editorial chair 
of a ladies' paper, I looked instinctively at the hang 
of the skirts. It was not good. Those vague 
frocks were such as had previously been something 
else, and would soon be transformed by discreet 
modifications into something still else. Candle- 



ARTISTIC EVENING 3 

light was best for them. But what grace of de- 
meanour, what naturalness, what candid ease and 
appositeness of greeting, what absence of self -con- 
sciousness! Paris is the self -unconscious. 

I was presented as le romancier anglais. It 
sounded romantic. I thought: "What a false im- 
pression they are getting, as of some vocation ex- 
otic and delightful ! If only they knew the prose of 
it!" I thought of their conception of England, a 
mysterious isle. When Balzac desired to make a 
woman exquisitely strange, he caused her to be born 
in Lancashire. 

My host begged permission to go on playing. In 
the intervals of being a publicist, he composed 
music, and he was now deciphering a manuscript 
freshly written. I bent over between the two 
women, and read the title : 

"Ygdrasil: reverie" 

*5* «•* *5* i5* 

When there were a dozen or fifteen people in the 
room, and as many candles irregularly disposed like 
lighthouses over a complex archipelago, I formed 
one of a group consisting of those two women and 
another, a young dramatist who concealed his ex- 
pressive hands in a pair of bright yellow gloves, 
and a middle-aged man whose constitution was ob- 
viously ruined. This last was librarian of some 
public library — I forget which — and was stated to 
be monstrously erudite in all literatures. I asked 
him whether he had of late encountered anything 
new and good in English. 



4 PARIS NIGHTS 

"I have read nothing later than Swinburne," he 
replied in a thin, pinched voice — like his features, 
like his wary and suffering eyes. Speaking with 
an icy, glittering pessimism, he quoted Stendhal to 
the effect that a man does not change after twenty- 
five. He supported the theory bitterly and joy- 
ously, and seemed to taste the notion of his own in- 
tellectual rigidity, of his perfect inability to receive 
new ideas and sensations, as one tastes an olive. 
The young dramatist, in a beautifully curved 
phrase, began to argue that certain emotional and 
purely intellectual experiences did not come under 
the axiom, but the librarian would have none of such 
a reservation. Then the women joined in, and it 
was just as if they had all five learnt off by heart 
one of Landor's lighter imaginary conversations, 
and were performing it. Well convinced that they 
were all five absurdly wrong, fanciful, and senti- 
mental either in optimism or pessimism, I neverthe- 
less stood silent and barbaric. Could I cut across 
that lacework of shapely elegant sentences and ap- 
posite gestures with the jagged edge of what in 
England passes for a remark? The librarian was 
serious in his eternal frost. The dramatist had the 
air of being genuinely concerned about the matter; 
he spoke with deference to the librarian, with chival- 
rous respect to the women, and to me with glances 
of appeal for help ; possibly the reason was that he 
was himself approaching the dreadful limit of 
twenty-five. But the women's eyes were always 
contradicting the polite seriousness of their tones. 
Their eyes seemed to be always mysteriously talk- 



ARTISTIC EVENING 5 

ing about something else; to be always saying: "All 
this that you are discussing is trivial, but I am brood- 
ing for ever on what alone is important." This, 
while true of nearly all women, is disturbingly true 
of Parisians. The ageing librarian, by dint of 
freezing harder, won the altercation: it was as 
though he stabbed them one by one with a dagger of 
ice. And presently he was lecturing them. The 
women were now admiring him. There was some- 
thing in his face worn by maladies, in his frail phys- 
ical unpleasantness, and in his frigid and total 
disgust with life, that responded to their secret 
dream. Their gaze caressed him, and he felt it 
falling on him like snow. That he intensely en- 
joyed his existence was certain. 

They began talking low among themselves, the 
women, and there was an outburst of laughter; 
pretty giggling laughter. The two who had been 
at the piano stood aside and whispered and laughed 
with a more intimate intimacy, struggling to sup- 
press the laughter, and yet every now and then 
letting it escape from sheer naughtiness. They 
cried. It was the fou rire. Impossible to believe 
that a moment before they had been performing in 
one of Landor's imaginaiy conversations, and that 
they were passionately serious about art and life 
and so on. They might have been schoolgirls. 

"Farceuses, toutes les deux!" said the host, com- 
ing up, delightfully indulgent, but shocked that 
women to whom he had just played Ygdrasil, 
should be able so soon to throw off the spell of it. 

The pretty and sprightly woman, all in white, 



6 PARIS NIGHTS 

despairing, whisked impulsively out of the room, in 
order to recall to herself amid darkness and cloaks 
and hats that she was not a giddy child, but an ex- 
perienced creature of thirty if she was a day. She 
came back demure, her eyes liquid, brooding. 

«5* «5* «?* «5* 

"By the way," said the young dramatist to the 
host, "Your People's Concert scheme — doesn't it 
move?" 

"By the way," said the host, suddenly excited, 
"Shall we hold a meeting of the committee now?" 

He had a project for giving performances of the 
finest music to the populace at a charge of five sous 
per head. It was the latest activity of the publicist 
in him. The committee appeared to consist of 
everybody who was standing near. He drew me 
into it, because, coming from London, I was of 
course assumed to be a complete encyclopaedia of 
London and to be capable of furnishing detailed 
statistics about all twopence-halfpenny enterprises 
in London for placing the finest music before the 
people. The women, especially the late laughers, 
were touched by the beauty of the idea underlying 
the enterprise, and their eyes showed that at instants 
they were thinking sympathetically of the far-off 
"people." The librarian remained somewhat apart, 
as it were with a rifle, and maintained a desolating 
fire of questions: "Was the scheme meant to improve 
the people or to divert them? Would they come? 
Would they like the finest music? Why five sous? 
Why not seven, or three? Was the enterprise to be 
self-supporting?" The host, with his glance fixed in 




SOME JAPANESE MUSIC ON THE l'LEYEL (Page 8) 



ARTISTIC EVENING 7 

appeal on me (it seemed to me that he was entreating 
me to accept him as a serious publicist, warning me 
not to be misled by appearances) — the host replied 
to all these questions with the sweetest, politest, 
wistful patience, as well as he could. Certainly the 
people would like the finest music ! The people had 
a taste naturally distinguished and correct. It was 
we who were the degenerates. The enterprise must 
be and would be self-supporting. No charity! No, 
he had learnt the folly of charity! But naturally 
the artists would give their services. They would 
be paid in terms of pleasure. The financial diffi- 
culty was that, whereas he would not charge more 
than five sous a head for admission, he could not 
hire a hall at a rent which worked out to less than a 
franc a head. Such was the problem before the 
committee meeting! Dufayel, the great shop- 
keeper, had offered to assist him. . . . The li- 
brarian frigidly exposed the anti-social nature of 
Dufayel's business methods, and the host hurriedly 
made him a present of Dufayel. Dufayel's help 
could not be conscientiously accepted. The prob- 
lem then remained! . . . London? London, 
so practical? As an encyclopaedia of London I was 
not a success. Politeness hid a general astonishment 
that, freshly arrived from London, I could not sug- 
gest a solution, could not say what London would 
do in a like quandary, nor even what London had 
done! 

"We will adjourn it to our next meeting," said 
the host, and named day, hour, and place. And the 
committee smoothed business out of its brow and 



8 PARIS NIGHTS 

dissolved itself, while at the host's request a girl 
performed some Japanese music on the Pleyel. 
When it was finished, the librarian, who had 
listened to Japanese music at an embassy, said that 
this was not Japanese music. "And thou knowest 
it well," he added. The host admitted that it was 
not really Japanese music, but he insisted with his 
plaintive smile that the whole subject of Japanese 
music was very interesting and enigmatic. 

Then the pretty sprightly woman, all in white, 
went and stood behind an arm-chair and recited a 
poem, admirably, and with every sign of emotion. 
Difficult to believe that she had ever laughed, that 
she did not exist continually at these heights! She 
bowed modestly, a priestess of the poet, and came 
out from behind the chair. 

"By whom?" demanded the librarian. 

And a voice answered, throbbing: "Henri de 
Regnier." 

"Indeed," said the librarian with cold, careless 
approval, "it is pretty enough." 

But I knew, from the tone alone of the answering 
voice, that the name of Henri de Regnier was a 
sacred name, and that when it had been uttered the 
proper thing was to bow the head mutely, as before 
a Botticelli. 

"I have something here," said the host, producing 
one of these portfolios which hurried men of affairs 
carry under their arms in the streets of Paris, and 
which are called serviettes; this one, however, was of 
red morocco. The pretty, sprightly woman sprang 
forward blushing to obstruct his purpose, but other 



ARTISTIC EVENING 9 

hands led her gently away. The host, using the 
back of the arm-chair for a lectern, read alternately 
poems of hers and poems of his own. And he, too, 
spoke with every sign of emotion. I had to con- 
quer my instinctive British scorn for these people 
because they would not at any rate pretend that 
they were ashamed of the emotion of poetry. Their 
candour appeared to me, then, weak, if not actually 
indecent. The librarian admitted occasionally that 
something was pretty enough. The rest of the 
company maintained a steady fervency of enthusi- 
asm. The reader himself forgot all else in his in- 
creasing ardour, and thus we heard about a score 
of poems — all, as we were told, unpublished — to- 
gether with the discussion of a score of poems. 

t5* «?* *?* <?• 

We all sat around the rim of an immense circle 
of white tablecloth. Each on a little plate had a 
portion of pineapple ice and in a little glass a 
draught of Asti. Far away, in the centre of the 
diaper desert, withdrawn and beyond reach, lay a 
dish containing the remains of the ice. Except 
fans and cigarette-cases, there was nothing else on 
the table whatever. Some one across the table 
asked me what I had recently finished, and I said a 
play. Everybody agreed that it must be translated 
into French. The Paris theatres simply could not 
get good plays. In a few moments it was as if the 
entire company was beseeching me to allow my 
comedy to be translated and produced with dazzling 
success at one of the principal theatres on the boule- 



10 PARIS NIGHTS 

vard. But I would not. I said my play was un- 
suitable for the French stage. 
"Because?" 

"Because it is too pure." 

I had meant to be mildly jocular. But this joke 
excited mirth that surpassed mildness. "Thou 
hearest that? He says his play is too pure for us!" 
My belief is that they had never heard one of these 
strange, nai've, puzzling barbarians make a joke be- 
fore, and that they regarded the thing in its novelty 
as really too immensely and exotically funny, in 
some manner which they could not explain to them- 
selves. Beneath their politeness I could detect 
them watching me, after that, in expectation of an- 
other outbreak of insular humour. I might have 
been tempted to commit follies, had not a new guest 
arrived. This was a tall, large-boned, ugly, coquet- 
tish woman, with a strong physical attractiveness 
and a voice that caused vibrations in your soul. She 
was in white, with a powerful leather waistband 
which suited her. She was intimate with everybody 
except me, and by a natural gift and force she held 
the attention of everybody from the moment of her 
entrance. You could see she was used to that. 
The time was a quarter to midnight, and she ex- 
plained that she had been trying to arrive for hours, 
but could not have succeeded a second sooner. She 
said she must recount her journee, and she re- 
counted her journee, which, after being a vague pre- 
historic nebulosity up to midday seemed to begin to 
take a definite shape about that hour. It was the 
journee of a Parisienne who is also an amateur 












W MWP 




A NKW GUEST ARRIVED (Page 10) 



ARTISTIC EVENING ll 

actress and a dog-fancier. And undoubtedly all 
her days were the same: battles waged against 
clocks and destiny. She had no sense of order or of 
time. She had no exact knowledge of anything; 
she had no purpose in life; she was perfectly futile 
and useless. But she was acquainted with the secret 
nature of men and women; she could judge them 
shrewdly; she was the very opposite of the ingenue; 
and by her physical attractiveness, and that deep, 
thrilling voice, and her distinction of gesture and 
tone, she created in you the illusion that she was a 
capable and efficient woman, absorbed in the most 
important ends. She sat down negligently behind 
the host, waving away all ice and Asti, and busily 
fanning both him and herself. She flattered him 
by laying her ringed and fluffy arm along the back 
of his chair. 

"Do you know," she said, smiling at him myste- 
riously. "I have made a strange discovery to-day. 
Paris gives more towards the saving of lost dogs 
than towards the saving of lost women. Very curi- 
ous, is it not?" 

The host seemed to be thunderstruck by this 
piece of information. The whole table was agitated 
by it, and a tremendous discussion was set on foot. 
I then witnessed for the first time the spectacle of 
a fairly large mixed company talking freely about 
scabrous facts. Then for the first time was I 
eased from the strain of pretending in a mixed com- 
pany that things are not what they in fact are. To 
listen to those women, and to watch them listening, 
was as staggering as it would have been to see them 



12 PARIS NIGHTS 

pick up red-hot irons in their feverish, delicate 
hands. Their admission that they knew every- 
thing, that no corner of existence was dark enough 
to frighten them into speechlessness, was the chief 
of their charms, then. It intensified their acute 
femininity. And while they were thus gravely 
talking, ironical, sympathetic, amused, or indig- 
nant, they even yet had the air of secretly thinking 
about something else. 

Discussions of such subjects never formally end, 
for the talkers never tire of them. This subject was 
discussed in knots all the way down six nights of 
stairs by the light of tapers and matches. I left the 
last, because I wanted to get some general informa- 
tion from my host about one of his guests. 

" She is divorcing her husband," he said, with the 
simple sad pride of a man who had been a petitioner 
in the matrimonial courts. "For the rest, you 
never meet any but divorced women at my place. 
It saves complications. So have no fear." 

We shook hands warmly. 

"Au revoir, mon ami" 

"Au revoir, mon cher" 



II 

THE VARIETIES 

The filth and the paltry shabbiness of the en- 
trance to the theatre amounted to cynicism. In- 
stead of uplifting by a foretaste of light and mag- 
nificence, as the entrance to a theatre should, it de- 
pressed by its neglected squalour. Twenty years 
earlier it might have cried urgently for cleansing 
and redecoration, but now it was long past crying. 
It had become vile. In the centre at the back sat 
a row of three or four officials in evening dress, 
prosperous clubmen with glittering rakish hats, at 
a distance of twenty feet, but changing as we ap- 
proached them to indigent, fustian-clad ticket- 
clerks penned in a rickety rostrum and condemned 
like sandwich-men to be ridiculous in order to live. 
(Their appearance recalled to my mind the fact 
that a "front-of-the-house" inspector at the prin- 
cipal music-hall in France and in Europe is paid 
thirty sous a night.) They regarded our tickets 
with gestures of scorn, weariness, and cupidity. 
None knew better than they that these coloured 
scraps represented a large lovely gold coin, rare and 
yet plentiful, reassuring and yet transient, the price 
of coals, boots, nectar, and love. 

We came to a very narrow, low, foul, semi-circu- 
lar tunnel which was occupied by hags and harpies 

13 



14 PARIS NIGHTS 

with pink bows in their hair, and by marauding men, 
and by hats and cloaks and overcoats, and by a 
double odour of dirt and disinfectants. Along the 
convex side of the tunnel were a number of little 
doors like the doors of cells. We bought a pro- 
gramme from a man, yielded our wraps to two har- 
pies, and were led away by another man. All these 
beings looked hungrily apprehensive, like dogs 
nosing along a gutter. The auditorium which was 
nearly full, had the same characteristics as the 
porch and the couloir. It was filthy, fetid, uncom- 
fortable, and dangerous. It had the carpets of a 
lodging-house of the 'seventies, the seats of an old 
omnibus, the gilt and the decorated sculpture of a 
circus at a fair. And it was dingy! It was en- 
crusted with dinginess ! 

Something seemed to be afoot on the stage : from 
the embittered resignation of the audience and the 
perfunctory nonchalance of the players, we knew 
that this could only be the curtain-raiser. The hour 
was ten minutes past nine. The principal piece was 
advertised to commence at nine o'clock. But the 
curtain-raiser was not yet finished, and after it was 
finished there would be the entr'acte — one of the re- 
nowned, interminable entr'actes of the Theatre 
des Varietes. 

<5* <•* «?* £* 

The Varietes is still one of the most "truly Paris- 
ian" of theatres, and has been so since long before 
Zola described it fully in Nana. The young bloods 
of Buenos Ayres and St. Petersburg still have vis- 
ions of an evening at the Varietes as the superlative 



THE VARIETES 15 

of intense living. Every theatre with a reputation 
has its "note," and the note of the Varietes is to 
make a fool of its public. Its attitude to the public 
is that of an English provincial hotel or an English 
bank: "Come, and be d — d to you! Above all, do 
not imagine that I exist for your convenience. You 
exist for mine." At the Varietes bad management 
is good management; slackness is a virtuous coquet- 
terie. It would never do, there, to be prompt, clean, 
or honest. To make the theatre passably habitable 
would be ruin. Its chic would be lost if it ceased to 
be a Hades of discomfort and a menace to health. 
There is a small troupe of notorious artistes, some 
of whom show great talent when it occurs to them 
to show it; the vogue of the rest is one of the innu- 
merable mysteries which abound in theatrical life. 
It is axiomatic that they are all witty, and that what- 
ever lines they enunciate thereby become witty. 
They are simply side-splitting as Sydney Smith was 
simply side-splitting when he asked for the potatoes 
to be passed. Also the manager of the theatre al- 
ways wears an old straw hat, summer and winter. 
He is the wearer of an eternal battered straw hat, 
who incidentally manages a theatre. You go along 
the boulevard, and you happen to see that 
straw hat emerging from the theatre. And by 
the strange potency of the hat you will be 
obliged to say to the next acquaintance you 
meet: "I've just seen Samuel in his straw 
hat." And the thought in your mind and in the 
mind of your acquaintance will be that you are 
getting very near the heart of Paris. 



16 PARIS NIGHTS 

Beyond question the troupe of favourites consid- 
ers itself to be the real centre of Paris, and, there- 
fore, of civilisation. Practically the entire Press, 
either by good nature, stupidity, snobbishness, or 
simple cash transactions, takes part in the vast make- 
believe that the troupe is conferring a favour on 
civilisation by consenting to be alive. And the 
troupe of course behaves accordingly. It puts its 
back into the evening when it thinks it will, and 
when it thinks it won't, it doesn't. "Aux Varietes 
on travaille quand on ale temps/' The rise of the 
curtain awaits the caprice of a convivial green-room. 
"Don't hurry — the public is getting impatient." 
Naturally, the underlings are not included in the 
benefits of the make-believe. "At rehearsals we 
may wait two hours for the principals," a chorus- 
girl said to me. "But if we are five minutes late, 
one flings us a fine. A hundred francs a month I 
touch, and it has happened to me to pay thirty in 
fines. Some one gets all that, you know!" She 
went off into an impassioned description of scenes 
at rehearsals of a ballet, how the ballet-master, after 
epical outbursts, would always throw up his arms in 
inexpressible disgust and retire to his room, and how 
the women would follow him and kiss and cajole 
and hug him, and how then, after a majestic pause, 
his step could be heard slowly descending the stairs, 
and at last the rehearsal would resume. . . . 
The human interest, no doubt! 

The Varietes has another role and justification. 
It is what the French call a women's theatre. 
When I asked a well-known actress why the entr'- 



THE VARIETES 17 

actes at the Varietes were so long, she replied with 
her air of finding even the most bizarre phenomena 
quite natural: "There are several reasons. One is, 
so that the gentlemen may have time to write notes 
and to receive answers." I did not conceal my 
sense of the oddness of this method of conducting 
a theatre, whereupon she reminded me that it was 
the Varietes we were talking about. She said that 
little by little I should understand all sorts of 
things. 

(?• *• *3* c3* 

As the principal piece progressed — it was an 
operette — the apathy of the public grew more and 
more noticeable. They seemed to have forgotten 
that they were in one of the most truly Parisian of 
theatres, watching players whose names were house- 
hold words and synonyms of wit and allurement. 
There was no applause, save from a claque which 
had carried discipline to the extreme. The favour- 
ites were evidently in one of their moods of casual- 
ness. Either the piece had run too long or it was 
not going to run long enough. It was a piece 
brightly and jinglingly vulgar, ministering, of 
course, in the main, to the secret concupiscence which 
drives humanity forward; titillating, like most 
stage-spectacles, all that is base, inept, and gross in 
a crowd whose units are perhaps, not quite odious. 
A few of the performers had moments of real bril- 
liance. But even these flashes did not stir the pub- 
lic, whose characteristic was stolidity. A public 
which, having regard to the conditions of the par- 
ticular theatre, necessarily consisted of simple snob- 



18 PARIS NIGHTS 

bish gulls whose creed is whatever they read or hear, 
with an admixture of foreigners, provincials, ad- 
venturers, and persons who, having no illusions, 
go to the Varietes because they have been to every- 
thing else and must go somewhere ! The first half- 
dozen rows of the stalls were reserved for males: a 
custom which at the Varietes has survived from a 
more barbaric age, as the custom of the finger-bowl 
has survived in the repasts of the polite. The self- 
satisfied and self-conscious occupants of these rows 
seemed to summarise and illustrate all the various 
masculine stupidity of a great and proud city. To 
counterbalance this preponderance of the male, I 
could glimpse, behind the lath grilles of the cages 
called baignoires, the forms of women (each 
guarded) who I hope were incomparable. The 
sight of these grilles at once sent the mind to the 
seraglio, and the House of Commons, and other 
fastnesses of Orientalism. 

The evening was interminable, not for me alone, 
but obviously for the majority of the audience. 
Impossible to describe the dull fortitude of the au- 
dience without being accused of wilful exaggera- 
tion! Only in the entr'actes, in the amplitude and 
dubious mystery of the entr'actes, did the audience 
arouse itself into the semblance of vivacity. There 
was but little complaining. Were we not at the 
Varietes? At the Varietes, to suffer was part of 
the entertainment. The French public is a public 
which accepts all in Christian meekness — all! It 
knows that it exists for the convenience of the 
bureaucracy and the theatres. It covers its coward- 




OPPOSITE THE MOULIN ROUGE" (Page 21) 



THE VARI^T^S 19 

ice under a mantle of philosophy and politeness. 
Its fierce protest is a shrug. "Que voulez-vous? 
C'est comme ca." 

<?* t5* «?* <?• 

At last, at nearly half after midnight, we came 
forth, bitterly depressed, as usual, by the deep con- 
sciousness of futile waste. I could see, in my pre- 
occupation, the whole organism of the Varietes, 
which is only the essence of the French theatre. A 
few artistes and a financier or so at the core, wilful, 
corrupt, self-indulgent, spoiled, venal, enormously 
unbusinesslike, incredibly cynical, luxurious in the 
midst of a crowd of miserable parasites and menials ; 
creating for themselves, out of electric globes, and 
newspapers, and posters, and photographs, and the 
inexhaustible simplicity and sexuality of the public, 
a legend of artistic greatness. They make a frame, 
and hang a curtain in front of it, and put footlights 
beneath ; and lo ! the capricious manoeuvres of these 
mortals become the sacred, authoritative function- 
ing of an institution! 

It was raining. The boulevard was a mirror. 
And along the reflecting surface of this mirror cab 
after cab, hundreds of cabs, rolled swiftly. Dozens 
and dozens were empty, and had no goal ; but none 
would stop. They all went ruthlessly by with of- 
fensive gestures of disdain. Strangers cannot be- 
lieve that when a Paris cabman without a fare re- 
fuses to stop on a wet night, it is not because he is 
hoping for a client in richer furs, or because he is 
going to the stables, or because he has earned enough 
that night, or because he has an urgent appointment 



20 PARIS NIGHTS 

with his enchantress — but simply from malice. 
Nevertheless this is a psychological fact which any 
experienced Parisian will confirm. On a wet night 
the cabman revenges himself upon the bourgeoisie, 
though the base satisfaction may cost him money. 
As we waited, with many other princes of the eartn 
who could afford to throw away a whole louis for a 
few hours' relaxation, as we waited vainly in the 
wet for a cabman who would condescend, I could 
savour only one sensation — that of exasperating 
tedium completely achieved. 



Ill 

EVENING WITH EXILES 

I lived up at the top of the house, absolutely 
alone. After eleven o'clock in the morning, when 
my servant left, I was my own doorkeeper. Like 
most solitaries in strange places, whenever I heard 
a ring I had a feeling that perhaps after all it might 
be the ring of romance. This time it was the tele- 
graph-boy. I gave him a penny, because in 
France, much more than in England, every one 
must live, and the notion still survives that a tele- 
gram has sufficient unusualness to demand a tip; 
the same with a registered letter. I read the tele- 
gram, and my evening lay suddenly in fragments 
at my feet. The customary accident, the accident 
dreaded by every solitary, had happened. "Sorry, 
prevented from coming to-night," etc. It was not 
yet six o'clock. I had in front of me a wilderness 
of six hours to traverse. In my warm disgust I 
went at once out in the streets. My flat had be- 
come mysteriously uninhabitable, and my work re- 
pugnant. The streets of Paris, by reason of their 
hospitality, are a refuge. 

The last sun of September was setting across the 
circular Place Blanche. I sat down at the terrace 
of the smallest cafe and drank tea. Exactly oppo- 
site were the crimson wings of the Moulin Rouge, 

and to the right was the establishment which then 

21 



22 PARIS NIGHTS 

held first place among nocturnal restaurants in 
Montmartre. It had the strange charm of a resort 
which is never closed, night or day, and where money 
and time are squandered with infantile fatuity. 
Somehow it inspired respect, if not awe. Its ter- 
race was seldom empty, and at that hour it was al- 
ways full. Under the striped and valanced awn- 
ing sat perhaps a hundred people, all slowly and de- 
liberately administering to themselves poisons of 
various beautiful colours. A crowd to give pause 
to the divination of even the most conceited student 
of human nature, a crowd in which the simplest 
bourgeois or artist or thief sat next to men and 
women exercising the oldest and most disreputable 
professions — and it was impossible surely to dis- 
tinguish which from which! 

Out of the medley of trams, omnibuses, carts, au- 
tomobiles, and cabs that continually rattled over the 
cobbles, an open fiacre would detach itself every 
minute or so, and set down or take up in front of 
the terrace. Among these was one carrying two 
young dandies, an elegantly dressed girl, and an- 
other young girl in a servant's cap and apron. 
They were all laughing and talking together. The 
dandies and the elegancy got out and took a vacant 
table amid the welcoming eager bows of a maitre 
d? hotel, a chasseur ', and a waiter. She was freshly 
and meticulously and triumphantly got up, like an 
elaborate confection of starched linen fresh from 
the laundress. Her lips were impeccably rouged. 
She delighted the eye by her health and her youth 
and her pretty insolence. A single touch 




v.5 r 



■ ■■}.. 



x* 



?* 






- ; / w * j —■■ ■ 

' 7 ■ 






/?i 



MONTMARTRE (Page 22) 



EVENING WITH EXILES 23 

would have soiled her, but she had not yet been 
touched. Her day had just begun. Probably, her 
bed was not yet made. The black-robed, scissored 
girls of the drapery store at the next angle of the 
place were finishing their tenth hour of vigil over 
goods displayed on the footpath. And next to that 
was a creamery where black-robed girls could obtain 
a whole day's sustenance for the price of one glass 
of poison. Evidently the young creature had only 
just arrived at the dignity of a fashionable dress- 
maker, and a servant of her own. Her ingenuous 
vanity obliged her to show her servant to the place, 
and the ingenuous vanity of the servant was con- 
tent to be shown off; for the servant might have a 
servant to-morrow — who could tell? The cabman 
and the servant *began to converse, and presently 
the cabman in his long fawn coat and white hat de- 
scended and entered the vehicle and sat down by 
the servant, and pulled out an illustrated comic 
paper, and they bent their heads over it and giggled 
enormously in unison; he was piling up money at 
the rate of at least a sou a minute. Occasionally 
the young mistress threw a loud sisterly remark to 
the servant, who replied gaily. And the two young 
dandies bore nobly the difficult role of world-worn 
men who still count not the cost of smiles. Say 
what you like, it was charming. It was one of the 
reasons why Paris is the city which is always for- 
given. Could one reasonably expect that the bright 
face of the vapid little siren should be solemnised 
by the thought: "To-day I am a day nearer forty 
than I was yesterday"? 



24 PARIS NIGHTS 

The wings of the Moulin Rouge, jewelled now 
with crimson lamps, began to revolve slowly. The 
upper chambers of the restaurant showed lights be- 
hind their mysteriously-curtained windows. The 
terrace was suddenly bathed in the calm blue of elec- 
tricity. No austere realism of the philosopher could 
argue away the romance of the scene. 

t5* <5* t?* £• 

I turned down the steep Rue Blanche, and at the 
foot of it passed by the shadow of the Trinite, the 
great church of illicit assignations, at whose clock 
scores of frightened and expectant hearts gaze anx- 
iously every afternoon; and through the Rue de la 
Chaussee d'Antin, where corsets are masterpieces 
beyond price and flowers may be sold for a sover- 
eign apiece, and then into the full fever of the grand 
boulevard with its maddening restlessness of il- 
luminated signs. The shops and cafes were all on 
fire, making two embankments of fire, above which 
rose high and mysterious facades masked by trees 
that looked like the impossible verdure of an opera. 
And between the summits of the trees a ribbon of 
rich, dark, soothing purple — the sky ! This was the 
city. This was what the race had accomplished, 
after eighteen Louises and nearly as many revolu- 
tions, and when all was said that could be said it re- 
mained a prodigious and a comforting spectacle. 
Every doorway shone with invitation; every satis- 
faction and delight was offered, on terms ridicu- 
lously reasonable. And binding everything to- 
gether were the refined, neighbourly, and graceful 
cynical gestures of the race: so different from the 



EVENING WITH EXILES 25 

harsh and awkward timidity, the self-centred ego- 
tism and artistocratic hypocrisy of Piccadilly. It 
seemed difficult to be lonely amid multitudes that so 
candidly accepted human nature as human nature 
is. It seemed a splendid and an uplifting thing to 
be there. I continued southwards, down the nar- 
row, swarming Rue Richelieu, past the immeasur- 
able National Library on the left and Jean Goujon's 
sculptures of the rivers of France on the right, and 
past the Theatre Francais, where nice plain people 
were waiting to see L'Aventuriere, and across the 
arcaded Rue de Rivoli. And then I was in the dark 
desert of the Place du Carrousel, where the omni- 
buses are diminished to toy-omnibuses. The town 
was shut off by the vast arms of the Louvre. The 
purple had faded out the sky. The wind, heralding 
October, blew coldly across the spaces. The art- 
fully arranged vista of the Champs Elysees, rising 
in flame against the silhouette of Cleopatra's needle, 
struck me as a meretricious device, designed to im- 
press tourists and monarchs. Everything was 
meretricious. I could not even strike a match with- 
out being reminded that a contented and corrupt in- 
efficiency was corroding this race like a disease. I 
could not light my cigarette because somebody, 
somewhere, had not done his job like an honest 
man. And thus it was throughout. 

I wanted to dine, and there were a thousand 
restaurants within a mile; but they had all ceased 
to invite me. I was beaten down by the over- 
whelming sadness of one who for the time being 
has no definite arranged claim to any friendly at- 



26 PARIS NIGHTS 

tention in a huge city — crowded with pre-occu- 
pied human beings. I might have been George 
Gissing. I re-wrote all his novels for him in an 
instant. I persisted southwards. The tiny walled 
river, reflecting with industrious precision all its 
lights, had no attraction. The quays, where all 
the book shops were closed and all the bookstalls 
locked down, and where there was never a cafe, 
were as inhospitable and chill as Riga. Mist 
seemed to heave over the river, and the pavements 
were oozing damp. 

I went up an entiy and rang a bell, thinking to 
myself: "If he isn't in, I am done for!" But at the 
same moment I caught the sound of a violoncello, 
and I knew I was saved, and by a miracle Paris was 
herself again. 

c5* t5* (?• <5* 

"Not engaged for dinner, are you?" I asked, as 
soon as I was in the studio. 

"No. I was just thinking of going out." 

"Well, let's go, then." 

"I was scraping some bits of Gluck." 

The studio was fairly large, but it was bare, un- 
kempt, dirty, and comfortless. Except an old sofa, 
two hard imperfect chairs, and an untrustworthy 
table, it had no furniture. Of course, it was lit- 
tered with the apparatus of painting. Its sole or- 
namentation was pictures, and the pictures were 
very fine, for they were the painter's own. He and 
his pictures are well known among the painters of 
Europe and America. Successful artistically, and 
with an adequate private income, he was a full mem- 



EVENING WITH EXILES 27 

ber of the Champ de Mars Salon, and he sold his 
pictures upon occasion to Governments. Although 
a British subject, he had spent nearly all his life in 
Paris ; he knew the streets and resorts of Paris like 
a Frenchman; he spoke French like a Frenchman. 
I never heard of him going to England. I never 
heard him express a desire to go to England. His 
age was perhaps fifty, and I dare say that he had 
lived in that studio for a quarter of a century, with 
his violoncello. It was plain, as he stood there, well 
dressed, and with a vivacious and yet dreamy eye, 
that the zest of life had not waned in him. He was 
a man who, now as much as ever, took his pleasure 
in seeing and painting beautiful, suave, harmonious 
things. And yet he stood there unapologetic amid 
that ugly and narrow discomfort, with the sheet of 
music pinned carelessly to an easel, and lighted by 
a small ill-regulated lamp with a truncated, dirty 
chimney — sole illumination of the chamber! His 
vivacious and dreamy eye simply did not see all that, 
never had seen it, never saw anything that it did not 
care to see. Nobody ever heard him multiply words 
about a bad picture, for example, — he would ignore 
it. 

With a gesture of habit that must have taken 
years to acquire he took a common rose-coloured 
packet of caporal cigarettes from the table by the 
lamp and offered it to me, pushing one of the cig- 
arettes out beyond its fellows from behind; you 
knew that he was always handling cigarettes. 

"It's not really arranged for 'cello," he mur- 
mured, gazing at the music, which was an air from 



28 PARIS NIGHTS 

Alceste, arranged for violin. "You see it's in the 
treble clef." 

"I wish you'd play it," I said. 

He sat down and played it, because he was inter- 
ested in it. With his greying hair and his fashion- 
able grey suit, and his oldest friend, the brown 'cello, 
gleaming between his knees, he was the centre of a 
small region of light in the gloomy studio, and the 
sound of the 'cello filled the studio. He had no 
home; but if he had had a home this would have 
been his home, and this his home-life. As a private 
individual, as distinguished from a public artist, 
this was what he had arrived at. He had secured 
this refuge, and invented this relaxation, in the mid- 
dle of Paris. By their aid he could defy Paris. 
There was something wistful about the scene, but it 
was also impressive, at any rate to me, who am 
otherwise constituted. He was an exile in the city 
of exiles ; a characteristic item in it, though of a va- 
riety exceedingly rare. But he would have been 
equally an exile in any other city. He had no con- 
sciousness of being an exile, of being homeless. He 
was above patriotisms and homes. Why, when he 
wanted even a book he only borrowed it! 

"Well, shall we go out and eat?" I suggested, af- 
ter listening to several lovely airs. 

"Yes," he said, "I was just going. I don't think 
you've seen my last etching. Care to?" 

I did care to see it, but I also desired my dinner. 

"This is a pretty good print, but I shall get bet- 
ter," he said, holding the sheet of paper under the 
lamp. 



EVENING WITH EXILES 29 

"How many shall you print?" I asked. 

"Thirty." 

"You might put me down for one." 

"All right. I think it will give you pleasure," he 
said with impartial and dignified conviction. 

After another ten minutes, we were out on the 
quay. 

"Grand autumn night?" he said appreciatively. 
"Where shall we have the aperitif?' 3 

"Aperitif! It's after eight o'clock, man!" 

"I think we shall have time for an aperitif" he in- 
sisted, mildly shocked. 

Drawing-rooms have their ritual. His life, too, 
had its ritual. 

«5* «•* *?* c5* 

At nearly midnight we were sitting, three of us, 
in a cafe of the Montparnasse quarter, possibly the 
principal cafe of the Montparnasse quarter. 
Neither notorious nor secretly eccentric ; but an hon- 
est cafe, in the sense of "honest" applied to certain 
women. Being situated close to a large railway 
terminus, it had a broad and an indulgent attitude 
towards life. It would have received a frivolous 
habitue of the Place Blanche, or a nun, or a clergy- 
man, with the same placidity. And although the 
district was modified, and whole streets, indeed, de- 
Parisianised by wandering cohorts of American 
and English art-amateurs of both sexes, this cafe 
remained, while accepting them, characteristically 
French. The cohorts thought they were seeing 
French life when they entered it; and they in fact 
were. 



30 PARIS NIGHTS 

This cafe was the chief club of the dis- 
trict, with a multitudinous and regular clientele 
of billiard-players, card-players, draught-players, 
newspapers readers, chatterers, and simple 
imbibers of bock. Its doors were continually 
a-swing, and one or the other of the two 
high-enthroned caissieres was continually lifting her 
watchful head from the desk to observe who entered. 
Its interior seemed to penetrate indefinitely into the 
hinterland of the street, and the effect of unending- 
ness was intensified by means of mirrors, which re- 
flected the shirt-sleeved arms and the cues of a 
score of billiard-players. Everywhere the same 
lively and expressive and never ungraceful gestures, 
between the marble table-tops below and the light- 
studded ceiling above ! Everywhere the same mur- 
mur of confusing rjleasant voices broken by the loud 
chant of waiters intoning orders at the service-bar, 
and by the setting down of heavy glass mugs and 
saucers upon marble! Over the cafe, unperceived, 
unthought of, were the six storeys of a large house 
comprising perhaps twenty-five separate and com- 
plete homes. 

The third man at our table was another exile, also 
a painter, but a Scotchman. He had lived in Paris 
since everlasting, but before that rumour said that 
he had lived for several years immovable at the little 
inn of a Norman village. Now, he never left Paris, 
even in summer. He exhibited, with marked dis- 
cretion, only at the Independants. Beyond these 
facts, and the obvious fact that he enjoyed inde- 
pendent means, nobody knew anything about him 




/ I 



LA DAME DL' COMPTOIR {Page 



EVENING WITH EXILES 31 

save his opinions. Even his age was exceedingly- 
uncertain. He looked forty, but there were ac- 
quaintances who said that he had looked forty for 
twenty years. He was one of those extremely re- 
served men who talk freely. Of his hopes, ambi- 
tions, ideals, disappointments, connections, he never 
said a word, but he did not refuse his opinion upon 
any subject, and on every subject he had a definite 
opinion which he would express very clearly, with a 
sort of polite curtness. His tendency was to cyni- 
cism — too cynical to be bitter. He did not com- 
plain of human nature, but he thoroughly believed 
the worst of it. These two men, the 'cellist and the 
Scotchman, were fast friends; or rather — as it might 
be argued in the strict sense neither of them had 
a friend — they were very familiar acquaintances, 
each with a profound respect for the other's judg- 
ment and artistic probity. Further, the Scotch- 
man admired his companion for a genius, as 
everybody did. 

They talked together for ever and ever, but not 
about politics. They were impatient on politics. 
Both were apparently convinced that politics are an 
artificiality imposed upon society by adventurers 
and interferers, and that if such people could be 
exterminated politics would disappear. Certainly 
neither had any interest in the organic aspect of so- 
ciety. Their political desire was to be let alone. 
Nor did they often or for long "talk bawdy"; after 
opinions had been given which no sensible man ever 
confides to more than two reliable others at a time, 
the Scotchman would sweep all that away as sec- 



32 PARIS NIGHTS 

ondary. Nor did they talk of the events of the day, 
unless it might be some titillating crime or mystery 
such as will fill whole pages of the newspaper for a 
week together. They talked of the arts, all the 
arts. And although they seemed to be always either 
in that cafe, or in their studios, or in bed, they had 
the air of being mysteriously but genuinely abreast 
of every manifestation of art. And since all the 
arts are one, and in respect to art they had a real at- 
titude and real views, all that they said was valuable 
suggestively, and their ideas could not by any prodi- 
gality be exhausted. As a patron of the arts even 
the State interested them, and herein they showed 
glimmerings of a social sense. In the intervals of 
this eternal and absorbing "art," they would discuss 
with admirable restrained gusto the exacerbating 
ridiculousness of the cohorts of American and Eng- 
lish art-amateurs who infested and infected the 
quarter. 

<5* «£• t^* £* 

Little bands of these came into the cafe from 
time to time, and drifting along the aisles of chairs 
would sit down where they could see as much as pos- 
sible with their candid eyes. The girls, inelegant 
and blousy ; the men, inept in their narrow shrewd- 
ness: both equally naive, conceited, uncorrupted, 
and incorruptible, they were absolutely incapable of 
appreciating the refined and corrupt decadence, the 
stylistic charm, the exquisite tradition of the civili- 
sation at which they foolishly stared, as at a peep- 
show. Not a thousand years would teach them the 
human hourly art of life as it was subtly practised 



EVENING WITH EXILES 33 

by the people whose very language they disdained 
to learn. When loud fragments of French phrases, 
massacred by Americans who had floated on but not 
mingled with Paris for years, reached us from an 
Anglo-Saxon table, my friends would seem to shud- 
der secretly, ashamed of being Anglo-Saxon. And 
if they were obliged to salute some uncouth Anglo- 
Saxon acquaintance, and thus admit their own un- 
Latin origin, their eyes would say: "Why cannot 
these people be imprisoned at home? Why are not 
we alone of Anglo-Saxons permitted to inhabit 
Paris ?" 

Occasionally a bore would complacently present 
himself for sufferance. Among these the chief was 
certainly the man whose existence was an endless 
shuttle-work between the various cities where art is 
or has been practised, from Munich to Naples. He 
knew everything about painting, but he ought to 
have been a bookmaker. He was notorious every- 
where as the friend of Strutt, Strutt being the very 
famous and wealthy English portrait-painter of 
girls. All his remarks were apropos of Tommy 
Strutt, Tommy Strutt — Tommy. He was invari- 
ably full of Tommy. And this evening he was full 
of Tommy's new German model, whose portrait 
had been in that year's Salon. . . . How 
Tommy had picked her up in the streets of Berlin ; 
how she was nineteen, and the rage of Berlin, and 
was asked to lunch at the embassies, and had re- 
ceived five proposals in three months: how she re- 
fused to sit for any one but Tommy, and even for 
him would only sit two hours a day: how Tommy 



34 PARIS NIGHTS 

looked after her, and sent her to bed at nine-thirty 
of a night, and hired a woman to play with her; and 
how Tommy had once telegraphed to her that he 
was coming to Berlin, and how she had hired a stu- 
dio and got it painted and furnished exactly to his 
fastidious taste all on her own, and met him at the 
station and driven him to the studio, and tea was all 
ready, etc.; and how pretty she was. . . . 

"What's her figure like?" the Scotchman in- 
quired gruffly. 

"The fact is," said Tommy's friend, dashed, "I 
haven't seen her posing for the nude. I've seen her 
posing to Tommy in a bathing-costume on the sea- 
shore, but I haven't yet seen her posing for the 
nude. . . ." He became reflective. "My boy, 
do you know what my old uncle used to say to me 
down at the old place in Kildare, when I was a 
youngster? My old uncle used to say to me — and 
he was dying — 'My boy, I've always made a rule of 
making love to every pretty woman I met. It's a 
sound rule. But let me warn you — you mustn't ex- 
pect to get more than five per cent, on your out- 
lay!'" 

"'The old place in Kildare!'" murmured the 
Scotchman, in a peculiarly significant tone, after 
Tommy Strutt's friend had gone; and this was the 
only comment on Tommy Strutt's friend. 

j7» l?» t7* t5* 

The talk on art was resumed, the renowned 
Tommy Strutt being reduced to his proper level of 
the third-rate and abruptly dismissed. One o'clock ! 
A quarter past one! The cafe was now nearly 



EVENING WITH EXILES 35 

empty. But these men had no regard for time. 
Time did not exist for them, any more than the 
structure of society. They were not bored, nor 
tired. They conversed with ease, and with mild 
pleasure in their own irony and in the disillusioned 
surety of their judgments. Then I noticed that 
the waiters had dwindled to two, and that only one 
cashier was left enthroned behind the bar; somewhat 
later, she too had actually gone! Both had at 
length rejoined their families, if any. The idea was 
startling that these prim and neat and mechanically 
smiling women were human, had private relations, a 
private life, a bed, a wardrobe. All over Paris, all 
day, every day, they sit and estimate the contents of 
trays, which waiters present to their practised gaze 
for an instant only, and receive the value of the 
drinks in bone discs, and write down columns of 
figures in long ledgers. They never take exercise, 
nor see the sun; they even eat in the cafe. Mystic 
careers! ... A quarter to two. Now the 
chairs had been brought in from the terrace, and 
there was only one waiter, and no other customer 
that I could see. The waiter, his face nearly as pale 
as his apron, eyed us with patient and bland resig- 
nation, sure from his deep knowledge of human 
habits that sooner or later we should in fact depart, 
and well inured to the great Parisian principle that 
a cafe exists for the convenience of its habitues. I 
was uneasy: I was even aware of guiltiness; but not 
my friends. 

Then a face looked in at the doorway, as if re- 
connoitring, and hesitated. 



36 PARIS NIGHTS 

"By Jove!" said the violoncellist. "There's the 
Mahatma back again! Oh! He's seen us!" 

The peering face preceded a sloping body into 
the cafe, and I was introduced to a man whose ex- 
cellent poems I had read in a limited edition. He 
was wearing a heavily jewelled red waistcoat, and 
the largest ring I ever saw on a human hand. He 
sat down. The waiter took his order and intoned 
it in front of the service-bar, proving that another 
fellow-creature was hidden there awaiting our pleas- 
ure. When the Mahatma's glass was brought, the 
Scotchman suddenly demanded from the waiter the 
total of our modest consumption, and paid it. The 
Mahatma said that he had arrived that evening di- 
rect from the Himalayas, and that he had been 
made or ordained a "khan" in the East. Without 
any preface he began to talk supernaturally. As 
he had known Aubrey Beardsley, I referred to the 
rumour that Beardsley had several times been seen 
abroad in London after his alleged death. 

"That's nothing," he said quickly. "I know a 
man who saw and spoke to Oscar Wilde in the 
Pyrenees at the very time when Oscar was in prison 
in England." 

"Who was the man?" I inquired. 

He paused. "Myself," he said, in a low tone. 

"Shall we go?" The Scotchman, faintly smiling, 
embraced his friend and me in the question. 

We went, leaving the Mahatma bent in solitude 
over his glass. The waiter was obviously saying 
to himself: "It was inevitable that they should ulti- 



EVENING WITH EXILES 37 

mately go, and they have gone." We had sat for 
four hours. 

Outside, cabs were still rolling to and fro. After 
cheerful casual good-nights, we got indolently into 
three separate cabs, and went our easy ways. I 
saw in my imagination the vista of the thousands of 
similar nights which my friends had spent, and the 
vista of the thousands of similar nights which they 
would yet spend. And the sight was majestic, tre- 
mendous. 



IV 

BOURGEOIS 

You could smell money long before you arrived 
at the double portals of the flat on the second floor. 
The public staircase was heated ; it mounted broadly 
upwards and upwards in a very easy slope, and at 
each spacious landing was the statue of some 
draped woman holding aloft a lamp which threw 
light on an endless carpet, and on marble mosaics. 
There was, indeed, a lift; but who could refuse the 
majestic invitation of the staircase, deserted, silent, 
and mysterious ? The bell would give but one ting, 
and always the same ting; it was not an electric de- 
vice by which the temperament and mood of the in- 
truder on the mat are accurately and instantly sig- 
nalled to the interior. 

The door was opened by the Tante herself — per- 
haps she had been crossing from one room to an- 
other — and I came into the large entrance-hall, 
which even on the brightest summer day was as ob- 
scure as a crypt, and which the architect had ap- 
parently meant to be appreciated only after night- 
fall. A vast armoire and a vast hat-and-coat stand 
were features of it. 

"My niece occupies herself with the children," 
the Tante half-whispered, as she took me into the 
drawing-room. And in her voice were mingled 

38 



BOURGEOIS 39 

pride, affection, and also a certain conspiratorial 
quality, as though the mysteries of putting a little 
boy and a little girl to bed were at once religious 
and delicious, and must not be disturbed by loud 
tones even afar off. 

She was a stout woman of seventy, dressed in 
black with a ruching of white at the neck and the 
wrists; very erect and active; her hair not yet en- 
tirely grey ; an aquiline eye. The soft, fresh white 
frill at the wrist made a charming contrast with the 
experienced and aged hand. She had been a widow 
for very many years, and during all those years she 
had matched herself against the world, her weapons 
being a considerable and secure income, and a quite 
exceptional natural shrewdness. The result had 
left her handsomely the victor. She had an im- 
mense but justifiable confidence in her own judg- 
ment and sagacity; her interest in the spectacle of 
existence was unabated, and a long and passionate 
study of human nature had not embittered her. 
She was a realist, and a caustic realist, but she could 
excuse ; she could accept man as she knew him in his 
turpitude. Her chief joys were to arrange and re- 
arrange her "reserves" of domestic goods, to dis- 
cuss character, and to indicate to a later generation, 
out of her terrific experience of Parisian life, the 
best methods of defence against the average trades- 
man and the average menial. So seldom did any- 
body get the better of her that, when the unusual 
did occur, she could afford to admit the fact with a 
liberal laugh: "II m'a roulee, celui-la! II a roule la 
vieille!" 



40 PARIS NIGHTS 

In a corner of the drawing-room she resumed the 
topic, always interesting to her, of my adventures 
among charwomen, generously instructing me the 
whole time in a hundred ways. And when the con- 
versation dropped she would sigh and go back to 
something previously said, and repeat it. "So she 
polishes the door-knobs every day! Well, that is a 
quality, at least." Then my hostess (her niece-in- 
law) came blandly in: a woman of thirty-five, also 
in mourning, with a pale, powdered face and golden 
hair; benevolent and calm, elegant, but with the 
elegance of a confessed mother. 

"Ca y est?" asked the Tante, meaning — were the 
infants at last couched? 

"Ca y est," said the mother, with triumph, with 
relief, and yet also with a little regret. 

There was a nurse, but in practice she was only 
an under- nurse; the head-nurse was the mother. 

"Eh bien, mon petit Bennett" the mother began, 
in a new tone, as if to indicate that she was no longer 
a mother, but a Parisienne, frivolous and challeng- 
ing, "what there that is new?" 

"He is there," said the Tante, interrupting. 

We heard the noise of the front-door, and by a 
common instinct we all rose and went into the hall. 

t5* «?• <5* <?• 

The master of the home arrived. He entered like 
a gust of wind, and Marthe, the thin old parlour- 
maid, who had evidently been lying in wait for him, 
started back in alarm, but alarm half-simulated. 
My host, about the same age as his wife, was a doc- 
tor, specialising in the diseases of women and chil- 




A BY-PRODUCT OF RUSSIAN POLITICS {Page 77) 



BOURGEOIS 41 

dren, and he had his cabinet on the ground-floor of 
the same house. He was late, he was impatient to 
regain his hearth, he was proud of his industry ; and 
the simple, instinctive joy of life sparkled in his eye. 

"Marie," he cried to his wife. "I love thee!" 
And kissed her furiously on both cheeks. 

"It is well," she responded, calmly smiling, with a 
sort of flirtatious condescension. 

"I tell thee I love thee!" he insisted, with his 
hands on her shoulders. "Tell me that thou lovest 
me!" 

"I love thee," she said calmly. 

"It is very well!" he said, and swinging round to 
Marthe, giving her his hat. "Marthe, I love you." 
And he caught her a smack on the shoulder. 

"Monsieur hurts me," the spinster protested. 

"Go then! Go then!" said the Tante, as the be- 
loved nephew directed his assault upon her in turn. 
She was grimly proud of him. He flattered her 
eye, for, even at his loosest, he had a professional 
distinction of deportment which her long-deceased 
husband, a wholesale tradesman, had probably 
lacked. 

"Well, my old one," the host grasped my hand 
once more, "you cannot figure to yourself how it 
gives me pleasure to have you here!" His voice 
was rich with emotion. 

This man had the genius of friendship in a very 
high degree. His delight in the society of his 
friends was so intense and so candid that only the 
most inordinately conceited among them could have 
failed to be aware of an uncomfortable grave sense 



42 PARIS NIGHTS 

of unworthiness, could have failed to say to them- 
selves fearfully: "He will find me out one day!" 

t3* «5* I?* <?• 

The dining-room was large, and massively fur- 
nished, and lighted by one immense shaded lamp 
that hung low over the table. Among the heavily 
framed pictures was a magnificent Jules Dupre, 
belonging to the Tante. She had picked it up long 
ago at a sale for something like ten thousand francs, 
apparently while the dealers were looking the other 
way. It was a known picture, and one of the 
Tante's satisfactions was that some dealer or other 
was always trying to relieve her of it, without the 
slightest success. She had a story, too, that on the 
day after the sale a Duchesse who affected Dupres 
had sent her footman offering to take the picture 
off her at a ten per cent, increase because it would 
make a pair with another magnificent Dupre al- 
ready owned by the Duchesse. "Eh, well," the 
widow of the tradesman had said to the footman, 
"you will tell Madame la Duchesse that if she wants 
my picture she had better come herself and inquire 
about it." In the flat, the Dupre was one of the 
great pictures of the world. Safer to sneeze at the 
Venus de Milo than at that picture! Another fa- 
vourite picture, also the property of Tante, was one 
by a living and super-modern painter, an acquaint- 
ance of another nephew of hers. I do not think she 
much cared for it, or that she cared much for any 
pictures. She had bought it by a benevolent ca- 
price. "What would you? He had not the sou. 
Cest un trfo gentil garfon, of a great talent, but he 



BOURGEOIS 43 

was eating all his money with women — with those 
birds that you know. And one day it may be worth 
its price." 

What always interested me most in the furniture 
of that dining-room was not the pictures, nor the 
ample plate, nor the edifices called sideboards, etc., 
but the apron of Marthe, who served. A plain, un- 
starched, white apron, without a bib — an apron that 
no English parlourmaid would have deigned to 
wear; but of such fine linen, and all the exactly geo- 
metric creases of its folding visible to the eye as 
Marthe passed round and round our four chairs! 
Whenever I saw that apron I could see linen-chests, 
and endless supplies of linen, and Tante and Marthe 
fussing over them on quiet afternoons. And it 
went so well with her dark-blue shiny frock! 
When Tante had joined her nephew's household she 
had brought with her Marthe, already old in her 
service. These two women were devoted to each 
other, each in her own way. "Arrive then, with 
that sauce, vieille folle!" Tante would command; 
and Marthe, pursing her lips, would defend herself 
with a "Mais madame — l" There was no high in- 
visible wall between Marthe and her employers. 
One was not worried, as one would have been in 
England, by the operation of the detestable and 
barbaric theory that Marthe was an automaton, in- 
accessible to human emotions. I remember seeing 
in the work-basket of the wife of a wealthy English 
socialist a little manual of advice to domestic serv- 
ants upon their deportment, and I remember this: 
"Learn to control your voice, and always speak in 



44 PARIS NIGHTS 

a low voice. Never show by your demeanour that 
you have heard any remark which is not addressed 
to you." I wonder what Marthe, who had never 
worn a cap, nor perhaps seen one, would have 
thought of the manual, which possibly was written 
by a distressed gentlewoman in order to earn a few 
shillings. Martha could smile. She could even 
laugh and answer back — but within limits. We 
had not to pretend that Marthe consisted merely 
of two ministering hands animated by a brain, but 
without a soul. In France a servant works longer 
and harder than in England, but she is permitted 
the constant use of a soul. 

A simple but an expensive dinner, for these peo- 
ple were the kind of people that, desiring only the 
best, were in a position to see that they had it, and 
accepted the cost as a matter of course. Moreover, 
they knew what the best was, especially the Tante. 
They knew how to buy. The chief dish was just 
steak. But what steak! What a thickness of steak 
and what tenderness! A whole cow had lived un- 
der the most approved conditions, and died a vio- 
lent death, and the very essence of the excuse for it 
all lay on a blue and white dish in front of the host- 
ess. Cost according! Steak; but better steak could 
not be had in the world ! And the consciousness of 
this fact was on the calm benignant face of the host- 
ess and on the vivacious ironic face of the Tante. 
So with the fruits of the earth, so with the wine. 
And the simple, straightforward distribution of the 
viands seemed to suit well their character. Into 
that flat there had not yet penetrated the grand 



BOURGEOIS 45 

modern principle that the act of carving is an ob- 
scene act, an act to be done shamefully in secret, be- 
hind the backs of the delicate impressionable. No ! 
The dish of steak was planted directly in front of 
the hostess, under her very nose, and beyond the 
dish a pile of four plates ; and, brazenly brandishing 
her implements, the Parisienne herself cut the tit- 
bits out of the tit-bit, and deposited them on plate 
after plate, which either Marthe took or we took 
ourselves, at hazard. Further, there was no embar- 
rassment of multitudinous assorted knives and forks 
and spoons. With each course the diner received 
the tools necessary for that course. Between 
courses, if he wanted a toy for his fingers, he had 
to be content with a crust. 

During the meal the conversation constantly re- 
verted with pleasure to the question of food ; it was 
diversified by expressions of the host's joy in his 
home, and the beings therein ; and for the rest it did 
not ascend higher than heterogeneous personal gos- 
sip, — "unstitched," as the French say. 

v* «?* c5* t5* 

Instead of going into the drawing-room, we went 
through a bed-chamber, into a small room at the 
back. By taking a circuitous service-passage, and 
infringing on the kitchen, we might ultimately have 
arrived at that room without passing through the 
bedchamber; but the proper, the ceremonious way 
to it was through the bedchamber. This trifling de- 
tail illuminates the methods of the French architect 
even when he is building expensively — methods 
which persist to the present hour. Admirable at 



46 PARIS NIGHTS 

facades, he is an execrable planner, wasteful and 
maladroit, as may be seen even in the most impor- 
tant public buildings in Paris — such as the Town 
Hall. In arranging the "disposition" of flats, he 
exhausts himself on the principal apartments, and 
then, fatigued, lets the others struggle as best they 
may for light and air and access in the odd corners 
of space which remain. Of course, he is strong in 
the sympathy of his clients. It is a wide question 
of manners, stretching from the finest palaces of 
France down to the labyrinthine coverts of indus- 
trialism. Up to twenty-five years ago, architects 
simply did not consider the factors of either light 
or ventilation. I have myself lived in a flat, in one 
of the best streets of central Paris, of which none of 
the eight windows could possibly at any period of 
the year receive a single direct gleam of sunlight. 
Up to twenty-five years ago, nobody had discovered 
a reason why, in a domestic interior, a bedroom 
should not be a highroad. . . . 

Visualise the magnificent straight boulevard, full 
of the beautiful horizontal glidings of trams and au- 
tomobiles; the lofty and stylistic frontages; the 
great carved doors of the house ; the quasi-Oriental 
entrance and courtyard, shut in from the fracas of 
the street; the monumental staircase; the spacious 
and even splendid dining-room; and then the bed- 
room opening directly off it; and then the still 
smaller sitting-room opening directly off that ; and 
us there — the ebullient doctor, his elegant and calm 
wife, the Tante (on a small chair), and myself — 
sitting round a lamp amid a miscellany of book- 



BOURGEOIS 47 

cases and oddments. This was the room that the 
doctor preferred of an evening. He would say, 
joyously: "C'est le decor homer 

«?» t5* t5» i5* 

A cousin of the host was announced ; and his rela- 
tives and I smiled archly, with affectionate malice, 
before he came in; for it was notorious that this 
cousin, an architect by profession, and a bachelor of 
forty years standing, had a few days earlier sol- 
emnly and definitely "broken" with his petite amie. 
I knew it. Everybody knew it within the wide fam- 
ily-radius. It was one of those things that "knew 
themselves." This call was itself a proof that the 
cousin had dragged his anchor. Moreover, he em- 
braced his aunt with a certain self-consciousness. 
He was a tall, dark-bearded man, well dressed 
in a dark-grey suit — a good specimen of French tail- 
oring, but a French tailor cannot use an iron and he 
cannot "roll" a collar. A rather melancholy and 
secretive and flaccid man, but somewhat hardened 
and strengthened by the lifelong use of a private 
fortune. They all had money — money of their 
own, independently of earned money; the wife had 
money — and I do not think that it occurred to any 
of them to live up to his or her income; their re- 
sources were always increasing, and the reserves that 
the united family could have brought up to face a 
calamity must have been formidable. None of 
them had ever been worried about money, and by 
reason of their financial ideals they were far more 
solid than a London family receiving, but spending, 
thrice their income. 



48 PARIS NIGHTS 

Marthe came with another coffee cup, and the 
cousin, when the hostess had filled it, set it down 
to go cold, after the French manner. 

"Well, my boy," said Tante, whose ancient eyes 
were sparkling with eagerness. "By what appears, 
thou art a widower since several days." 

"How a widower?" 

"Yes," said the host, "it appears that thou art 
a widower." And added enthusiastically: "I am 
pretty content to see thee, my old one." 

The hostess smiled at the widower with sympa- 
thetic indulgence. 

"Who has told you?" 

"What ! Who has told us ? All Paris knows it !" 

"Well," said the cousin, looking at the carpet and 
apparently communing with himself — he always had 
an air of self-communing, "I suppose it's true!" 
He drank the tenth of a teaspoonf ul of coffee. 

"Eh, well, my friend," the Tante commented. 
"I do not know if thou hast done well. That did 
not cost thee too dear, and she had a good-hearted 
face." Tante spoke with an air of special in- 
timacy, because she and the cousin had kept house 
together for some years at one period. 

"Thou hast seen her, Tante?" the hostess asked, 
surprised a little out of the calm in which she was 
crocheting. 

"Have I seen her? I believe it well! I caught 
them together once when I was driving in the 
Bois." 

"That was Antoinette," said the cousin. 

"It was not Antoinette," said the Tante. "And 



BOURGEOIS 49 

thou hast no need to say it. Thou quittedst An- 
toinette in '96, before I had begun to hire that car- 
riage. I recall it to myself perfectly." 

"I suppose now it will be the grand spree," said 
the hostess, "during several months." 

"The grand spree!" Tante broke in caustically. 
"Have no fear. The grand spree — that is not his 
kind. It is not he who will scatter his money with 
those birds. He is not so stupid as that," She 
laughed drily. 

"Is she rosse, the Tante, all the same!" the host, 
flowing over with good nature, comforted his 
cousin. 

Then Marthe entered again: 

"The children demand monsieur." 

The host bounded up from his chair. 

"What ! The children demand monsieur !" he ex- 
ploded. "At nine o'clock! It is not possible that 
they are not asleep !" 

"They say that monsieur promised to return to 
them after dinner." 

"It is true!" he admitted, with a gesture of dis- 
covery. "It is true!" 

"I pray thee," said the mother. "Go at once. 
And do not excite them." 

"I think I'll go with you," I said. 

"My little Bennett," the mother leaned towards 
me, "I supplicate you — at this hour — " 

"But naturally he will come with me!" the host 
cried obstreperously. 

We went, down a long narrow passage. There 
they were in their beds, the children, in a small bed- 



50 PARIS NIGHTS 

room divided into two by a low screen of ribbed 
glass, the boy on one side and the girl on the other. 
The window gave on to a small subsidiary court- 
yard. Through the half-drawn curtains the lighted 
windows of rooms opposite could be discerned, ris- 
ing, storey after storey, up out of sight. A night- 
light burned on a table. The nurse stood apart, at 
the door. The children were lively, but pale. 
They had begun to go to school, and, except the 
journey to and from school, they seemed to have al- 
most no outdoor exercise. No garden was theirs. 
The hall and the passages were their sole play- 
ground. And all the best part of their lives was 
passed between walls in a habitation twenty-five or 
thirty feet above ground, in the middle of Paris. 
Yet they were very well. The doctor did not romp 
with them. No ! He simply and candidly caressed 
them, girl and boy, in turn, calling them passion- 
ately by the most beautiful names, burying Ms head 
in the bedclothes, and fondling their wild hair. He 
then entreated them, with genuine humility, to com- 
pose themselves for sleep, and parted last from the 
girl. 

"She is exquisite — exquisite!" he murmured to me 
ecstatically, as we returned up the passage from 
this excursion. 

She was. 

«?• <?* i5* i?* 

In the small sitting-room the cousin was offering 
to the Tante some information of a political nature. 
The Tante kept a judicious eye on everything in 
Paris. 



BOURGEOIS 51 

"What!" The host protested vociferously. "He 
is again in his politics! Cousin, I supplicate 
thee—" 

A good deal of supplication went on there. The 
host did succeed in stopping politics. With all the 
weight of his vivacious good-nature he bore poli- 
tics down. The fact was, he had a real objection to 
politics, having convinced himself that they were 
permanently unclean in France. It was not the 
measures that he objected to, but the men — all of 
them with scarcely an exception — as cynical adven- 
turers. On this point he was passionate. Politics 
were incurably futile, horribly assommant. He 
would not willingly allow them to soil his hearth. 

"What hast thou done lately?" he asked of the 
cousin, changing the subject. 

And the talk veered to public amusements. The 
cousin had been "distracting himself" amid his sen- 
timental misadventures, by much theatre-going. 
They all, except the Tante, went very regularly to 
the theatres and to the operas. And not only that, 
but to concerts, exhibitions, picture-shows, services 
in the big churches, and every kind of diversion fre- 
quented by people in easy circumstances and by art- 
ists. There was little that they missed. They ex- 
hibited no special taste or knowledge in any art, but 
leaned generally to the best among that which was 
merely fashionable. They took seriously nearly 
every craftsman who, while succeeding, kept his 
dignity and refrained from being a mountebank. 
Thus, they were convinced that dramatists like Ed- 
mond Rostand and Henri Lavedan, actors and 



52 PARIS NIGHTS 

actresses like Le Bargy and Cecile Sorel, painters 
like Edouard Detaille and La Gandara, composers 
like Massenet and Charpentier, critics like Adolphe 
Brisson and Francis Chevassu, novelists like Rene 
Bazin and Daniel Lesueur, poets like Jean Riche- 
pin and Abel Bonnard, were original and first- 
class, and genuinely important in the history of 
their respective arts. On the other hand their 
attitude towards the real innovators and shapers of 
the future was timidly, but honestly, antipathetic. 
And they could not, despite any theorising to the 
contrary, bring themselves to take quite seriously 
any artist who had not been consecrated by public 
approval. With the most charming grace they 
would submit to be teased about this, but it would 
have been impossible to tease them out of it. And 
there was always a slight uneasiness in the air when 
they and I came to grips in the discussion of art. 
I could almost hear the shrewd Tante saying to 
herself: "What a pity this otherwise sane and 
safe young man is an artist!" 

"Figure to yourself," the host would answer me 
with an adorable, affectionate mien of apology, 
when I asked his opinion of a new work by Mau- 
rice Ravel, heard on a Sunday afternoon, "Figure 
to yourself that we scarcely liked it." 

And with the same mien, of a very fashionable 
comedy in which Lavedan, Le Bargy, and Julia 
Bartet had combined to create a terrific success at 
the Theatre Francais: 

"Figure to yourself, it was truly very nice, after 
all! Of course one might say. . . ." 



BOURGEOIS 53 

The truth was, it had carried them off their feet. 

Upon my soul I think I liked them the better 
for it all. And, in talking to them, I understood 
a little better the real and solid basis upon which 
rests all that overwhelming, complex, expensive ap- 
paratus of artistic diversions laid out for the public 
within a mile radius of the Place de l'Opera. There 
is a public, a genuine public, which desires ardently 
to be amused and which will handsomely put down 
the money for its amusement. And it is never 
tired, never satiated. The artist, who seldom pays, 
is apt to wonder if any considerable body of per- 
sons pay, is apt to regard the commercial continu- 
ance of art as a sort of inexplicable miracle. But 
these people paid. They always paid, and richly. 
And there were whole streets of large houses full of 
other people who shared their tastes and their habits, 
if not their extreme attractiveness. 

£ £ £ £ 

I wondered where we should be without them, we 
artists, as I took leave of them at something after 
midnight. My good friend, the melancholy cousin, 
had departed. Tante had gone to bed, though she 
protested she never slept. We had been drinking 
weak tea as we wandered about the dining-room. 
And now I, obdurate against the host's supplica- 
tions not to desert them so early, was departing 
too. At the door the hostess lighted a little taper, 
and gave it to me. And when the door was opened 
they moderated their caressing voices; for a dozen 
other domestic interiors, each intricate and com- 
plete, gave on the resounding staircase. And with 



54 PARIS NIGHTS 

my little taper I descended through the silence and 
the darkness of the staircase. And at the bottom I 
halted in the black entrance way, and summoned 
the concierge out of his sleep to release the catch 
of the small door within the great portals. There 
was a responsive click immediately, and in the black- 
ness a sudden gleam from the boulevard. The con- 
cierge and his wife, living for ever sunless in a room 
and a half beneath all those other interiors, were 
throughout the night at the mercy of a call, mine 
or another's. "Curious existence!" I thought, as 
my shutting of the door echoed about the building, 
and I stepped into the illumination of the boule- 
vard. "The concierge is necessary to them. And 
without the equivalent of such as they, such as I 
could not possess even a decent overcoat !" On the 
fapade of the house every outer casement was shut. 
Not a sign of life in it. 



V 

CAUSE CELEBRE 

Quite early in the winter evening, before the light 
had died out of the sky, central Paris was beginning 
to be pleasurably excited. The aspect of the 
streets and of the cafes showed that. One saw it 
and heard it in the gestures and tones of the people ; 
one had a proof of it in oneself. The whole city 
was in a state of delightful anxiety; and it was 
happy because the result of the night, whatever fate 
chose to decide, could not fail to be amusing and 
even thrilling. All the thoroughfares converging 
upon the small and crowded island which is the his- 
torical kernel of Paris, were busier and livelier than 
usual. In particular, automobiles thronged — 
the largest, glossiest, and most silent automo- 
biles, whose horns were orchestras — automo- 
biles which vied with motor-omnibuses for im- 
posingness and moved forward with the smooth 
majesty of trains. There came a point, near 
the twinkling bridges, where progress was im- 
possible, where an impalpable obstacle inter- 
vened, and vehicles stood arrested in long treble 
files, and mysterious words were passed backwards 
from driver to driver. But nobody seemed to mind; 
nobody seemed impatient; for it was something to 
be thus definitely and materially a part of the organ- 

55 



56 PARIS NIGHTS 

ised excitement. Hundreds of clever resourceful 
persons had had the idea of avoiding the main ave- 
nues, and creeping up unobserved to the centre of 
attraction by the little streets. So that all these 
ancient, narrow, dark lanes that thread between high 
and picturesque architectures were busy with auto- 
mobiles and carriages. And in the gloom one 
might see shooting round a corner the brilliant in- 
terior of an automobile, with electric light and 
flowers and a pet dog, and a couple of extremely 
fashionable young women in it, their eyes sparkling 
with present joy and the confident expectation of 
joy to come. And such young women, utterly cor- 
rect, were doing the utterly correct thing. But all 
these little streets led at last to the same impalpable 
obstacle. So that from a high tower, for instance, 
the Tour St. Jacques close by, one might have be- 
held the black masonry of the centre of attraction 
as it were beleaguered on every side by the attack- 
ing converging files that were held back by some 
powerful word; while the minutes elapsed, and the 
incandescent signs of shops and theatres increased 
in the sky, and the Seine, dividing to clasp the 
island, darkened into a lamp-reflecting mirror along 
which tiny half-discerned steamers restlessly plied. 

(?• <?• «5* «?• 

Despite the powerful word, the Palace of Justice, 
the centre of attraction, was tremendously alive and 
gay with humanity. Traffic could not be stopped, 
and was not stopped, and those who had sufficient 
energy and perseverance could insinuate themselves 
into its precincts. The great gold lamps that flank 




CAUSE CELEBRE (Page 55) 



CAUSE CELEBRE 57 

the staircase of honour gleamed upon a crowd con- 
tinually ascending and descending. The outer hall 
was full of laughing chatter and of smoke. And 
barristers, both old and young, walked to and fro 
in hieratic converse, waving their cigarettes in sober 
curves, and on every one of their faces as they gazed 
negligently at the public was the announcement 
that they could tell "an they would." All the in- 
terminable intersecting corridors were equally viva- 
cious, with their diminishing perspectives of stoves 
against which groups warmed themselves. Groups 
of talkers made the circuit of the corridors as it 
might have been the circuit of a town, passing a 
given spot regularly, and repeating and repeating 
the same arguments. And the solemn arched im- 
mensity of the Hall of Lost Footsteps was like a 
Bourse. Here, more than anywhere else, one had 
the sense of audience-chambers concealed behind 
doors, where fatal doings were afoot; one had the 
sense of the terrific vastness and complexity of the 
Palace wherein scores of separate ceremon- 
ious activities simultaneously proceeded in scores 
of different halls. The general public knew only 
that somewhere within the Palace, somewhere 
close at hand, at the end of some particular 
passage, guarded doors hid the spectacle whose 
slightest episode was being telegraphed to all 
the cities of the entire civilised world, and the gen- 
eral public was content, even very content, to be 
near by. 

The affair was in essence a trifle ; merely the trial 
of a woman for the murder of her husband. But 



58 PARIS NIGHTS 

this woman was a heroic woman; this woman be- 
longed by right of brain and individual force to the 
great race of Therese Humbert. Years before, she 
had moved safely in the background of a sensational 
tragedy involving the highest personages of the Re- 
public. And now in the background of her own 
tragedy there moved somebody so high and so po- 
tent that no newspaper dared or cared to name his 
name. All that was known was that this enigmatic 
and awful individual existed, that he was in- 
volved, that had he been less sublime he would have 
had to appear before the court, that he would not 
appear, and that justice would suffer accordingly. 
In the ordeal of extremest publicity, the woman had 
emerged a Titaness. Throughout all her alterca- 
tions with judge, advocates, witnesses, and journal- 
ists, she had held her own grandly, displaying not 
only an astounding force of character, but a superb 
appreciation of the theatrical quality of her role. 
She was of a piece with yellow journalism, and the 
multitude that gapes for yellow journalism. She 
was shameless. She was caught again and again in 
a net of lies, and she always escaped. She admitted 
nearly everything: lyings, adulteries, and manifold 
deceits ; but she would not admit that she knew any- 
thing about the murder of her husband. And even 
though it was obvious that the knots by which she 
was bound when the murder was discovered were 
not serious knots, even though she left a hundred in- 
criminating details unexplained, a doubt concern- 
ing her guilt would persist in the minds of the 
impartial. She was indubitably a terrible creature, 



CAUSE CELEBRE 59 

but she was an enchantress, and she was also beyond 
question an exceedingly able housekeeper and 
hostess. She might be terrible without being a 
murderess. 

And now the trial was closing. The verdict, it 
was stated, would be rendered that night even if the 
court sat till midnight. It would be a pity to keep 
an amiable public, already on the rack of impatience 
for many days, waiting longer. The time was ripe. 
Further, the woman had had enough. Her re- 
sources were exhausted, and to continue the fight 
would mean an anti-climax. The woman had com- 
pletely lost the respect of the public — that was in- 
evitable — but she had not lost its admiration. The 
attitude of the public was cruel, with the ignoble 
cruelty which is practised towards women in Latin 
countries alone; she had even been sarcastically 
sketched in the most respectable illustrated paper in 
the attitude of a famous madonna ; but beneath the 
inconceivably base jeers, there remained admiration; 
and there remained, too, gratitude — the gratitude 
offered to a gladiator who has fought well and pro- 
vided a really first-class diversion. 

£& t5* «5* t?* 

The supper-restaurants were visited earlier and 
were much more crowded than usual on that night. 
It was as though the influence of the trial had been 
aphrodisiacal. Or it may have been that the men 
and women of pleasure wished to receive the verdict 
in circumstances worthy of its importance in the an- 
nals of pleasure. Or it may have been that dinner 
had been deranged by the excitations connected with 



60 PARIS NIGHTS 

the trial and that people felt honestly hungry. I 
went into one of these restaurants, in a square whose 
buildings are embroidered with inviting letters of 
fire until dawn every morning throughout the year. 
A stern attendant took me up in a lift, and instantly 
I had quitted the sternness of the lift I was in an- 
other atmosphere. There was the bar, and there 
the illustrious English barman, drunk. For in 
these regions the barman must always be English 
and a little drunk. The barman knows everybody, 
and not to know his Christian name and the feel of 
his hand is to be nobody. This barman is a Paris- 
ian celebrity. But let an accident or a misadven- 
ture disqualify him from his work, and he will be 
forgotten utterly in less than a week. And in his 
martyred old age he will certainly recount to chari- 
table acquaintances, who find him ineffably tedious, 
how he was barman at the unique Restaurant Lepic 
in the old days when fun was really fun, and the 
most appalling iniquity was openly tolerated by 
the police. 

The bar and the barman and the cloak-room at- 
tendant (another man of genius) are only the pre- 
lude to the great supper-hall, which is simply and 
completely dazzling, with its profuse festoons of 
electric bulbs, its innumerable naked shoulders, 
arms, and bosoms, its fancy costumes, its bald heads, 
its music, clatter, and tinkle, and its desperate 
gaiety. To go into it is like going into a furnace 
of sensuality. It can be likened to nothing but 
an orange-lit scene of Roman debauch in a play 
written and staged by Mr. Hall Caine. One feels 



CAUSE CELEBRE 61 

that one has been unjust in one's attitude to Mr. 
Hall Caine's claims as a realist. 

Although the restaurant will positively not hold 
any more revellers, more revellers insist on coming 
in, and fresh tables are produced by conjuring and 
placed for them between other tables, until the whole 
mass of wood and flesh is wedged tight together 
and waiters have to perform prodigies of insinua- 
tion. The effect of these multitudinous wasters is 
desolating, and even pathetic. It is the enormous 
stupidity of the mass that is pathetic, and its secret 
tedium that is desolating. At their wits' end how 
to divert themselves, these bald heads pass the time 
in capers more antique and fatuous than were ever 
employed at a village wedding. Some of them find 
distraction in monstrous gorging — and beefsteaks 
and fried potatoes and spicy sauces go down their 
throats in a way to terrorise the arthritic beholder. 
Others merely drink. Some quarrel, with the bone- 
less persistency of intoxication. One falls humor- 
ously under a table, and is humorously fished up by 
the red-coated leader of the orchestra: it is a 
marked success of esteem. Many are content to 
caress the bright odalisques with fond, monotonous 
vacuity. A few of these odalisques, and the wait- 
ers, alone save the spectacle from utter humiliation. 
The waiters are experts engaged in doing their job. 
The industry of each night leaves them no energy 
for dissoluteness. They are alert and determined. 
Their business is to make stupidity as lavish as pos- 
sible, and they succeed. To see them surveying 
with cold statistical glances the field of their opera- 



62 PARIS NIGHTS 

tions, to listen to their indestructible politeness, to 
divine the depth of their concealed scorn — this is a 
pleasure. And some of the odalisques are beauti- 
ful. Fine women in the sight of heaven ! They too 
are experts, with the hard preoccupation of experts. 
They are at work; and this is the battle of life. 
They inspire respect. It is — it is the dignity of 
labour. 

Suddenly it is announced that the jury at the 
Palace are about to deliver their verdict. Nobody 
knows how the news has come, nor even who first 
spoke it in the restaurant. But there it is. Hu- 
morous guffaws of relief are vented. The fever 
of the place becomes acute, with a decided influence 
on the consumption of champagne. The accused 
lady is toasted again and again. Of course, she had 
been, throughout, the solid backbone of the chatter ; 
but now she was all the chatter. And everybody 
recounted again to everybody else every suggestive 
rumour of her iniquity that had appeared in any 
newspaper for months past. She was tried over 
again in a moment, and condemned and insulted and 
defended, and consistently honoured with libations. 
She had never been more truly heroic, more legend- 
ary, than she was then. 

The childlike company loudly demanded the ver- 
dict, with their tongues and with their feet. 

A beautiful young girl of about eighteen, the 
significant features of whose attire were long black 
stockings and a necklace, said to a gentleman who 
was helping her to eat a vast entrecote and to drink 
champagne : 




THEY INSPIRE RESPECT {Page 62) 



CAUSE CfiL^BRE 



63 



"If it comes not soon, it will be too late." 

"The verdict?" said the fatuous swain. "How? 
—too late?" 

"I shall be too drunk," said the girl, apparently 
meaning that she would be too drunk to savour the 
verdict and to get joy from it. She spoke with 
mournful and slightly disgusted certainty, as 
though anticipating a phenomenon which was abso- 
lutely regular and absolutely inevitable. 

And then, on a table near the centre of the room, 
instead of plates and glasses appeared a child- 
dancer who might have been Spanish or Creole, but 
who probably had never been out of Montmartre. 
This child seemed to be surrounded by her family 
seated at the table — by her mother and her aunts 
and a cousin or so, all with simple and respectable 
faces, naively proud of and pleased with the child. 
From their expressions, the child might have been 
cutting bread and butter on the table instead of 
dancing. The child danced exquisitely, but her per- 
formance could not moderate the din. It was a 
lovely thing gloriously wasted. The one feature 
of it that was not wasted on the intelligence of the 
company was the titillating contrast between the 
little girl's fresh infancy and the advanced decom- 
position of her environment. 

She ceased, and disappeared into her family. 
The applause began, but it was mysteriously and 
swiftly cut short. Why did every one by a simultane- 
ous impulse glance eagerly in the direction of the 
door? Why was the hush so dramatic? A voice — 
whose? — cried near the doorway: 



64 PARIS NIGHTS 

"Acquittier 

And all cried triumphantly: "Acquitted 
Acquittee! Acquittee! Acquitted" Happy, bois- 
terous Bedlam was created and let loose. Even the 
waiters forgot themselves. The whole world stood 
up, stood on chairs, or stood on tables ; and shouted, 
shrieked, and whistled. But the boneless drunkards 
were still quarrelling, and one bald head had re- 
tained sufficient presence of mind to wear a large 
oyster-shell facetiously for a hat. And then the or- 
chestra, inspired, struck into a popular refrain of the 
moment, perfectly apposite. And all sang with 
right good- will : 

"Le lendemain elle etait souriante." 



VI 

RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET AT THE OPERA 

Sylvain's is the only good restaurant in the centre 
of Paris where you can dine in the open air, that is 
to say, in the street. Close by, the dark, still mass 
of the Opera rises hugely out of the dusk and out 
of the flitting traffic at its base. Sylvain's is full of 
diners who have no eyes to see beyond the surfaces 
of things. 

By virtue of a contract made between Sylvain's 
and the city, the diners are screened off from the 
street and from the twentieth century by a row of 
high potted evergreens. Pass within the screen, 
and you leave behind you the modern epoch. The 
Third Republic recedes; the Second Empire re- 
cedes ; Louis-Philippe has never been, nor even Na- 
poleon; the Revolution has not begun to announce 
itself. You are become suddenly a grand seigneur. 
Every gesture and tone of every member of the 
personnel of Sylvain's implores your excellency 
witTi one word: 

"Deign!" 

It is curious that while a modern shopkeeper who 
sells you a cigar or an automobile or a quarter of 
lamb does not think it necessary to make you a noble 
of the ancien regime before commencing business, a 
shopkeeper who sells you cooked food could not omit 

65 



66 PARIS NIGHTS 

this preliminary without losing his self-respect. 
And it is the more curious since all pre-democratic 
books of travel are full of the cheek of these par- 
ticular shopkeepers. Such tales of old travellers 
could scarcely be credited, in spite of their unison, 
were it not that the ancient tradition of rapacious 
insolence still survives in wild and barbaric spots 
like the cathedral cities of England. 

Your excellency, attended by his gentlemen-in- 
waiting (who apparently never eat, never want to 
eat), in the intervals of the ceremonious collation 
will gaze with interest at the Opera, final legacy of 
the Empire to the Republic. A great nation owes 
it to itself to possess a splendid opera-palace. Art 
must be fostered. The gracious amenities of life 
must be maintained. And this is the State's affair. 
The State has seen to it. The most gorgeous build- 
ing in Paris is not the legislative chamber, nor the 
hall of the University, nor the clearing-house of 
charity. It is the Opera. The State has paid for 
it, and the State pays every year for its maintenance. 
That is, the peasant chiefly pays. There is not a 
peasant in the farthest corner of France who may 
not go to bed at dark comforted by the thought that 
the Opera in Paris is just opening its cavalry-sen- 
tinelled doors, and lighting its fifteen thousand 
electric candles, and that he is helping to support all 
that. Paris does not pay ; the habitues of the Opera 
do not pay; the yawning tourists do not pay, the 
grandiose classes do not pay. It is the nation, as a 
nation, that accepts the burden, because the encour- 
agement of art is a national duty. (Moreover, 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 67 

visiting monarchs have to be diverted. ) Of one sort 
or another, from the tenor to the vendor of pro- 
grammes, there are twelve hundred priests and 
priestesses of art in the superb building. A few 
may be artists. But it is absolutely certain that all 
are bureaucrats. 

The Opera is the Circumlocution Office. The | 
Opera is a State department. More, it is probably 
the most characteristic of all the State departments, 
and the most stubbornly reactionary. The nominal 
director, instead of being omnipotent and godlike, 
is only a poor human being whose actions are the re- 
sultant of ten thousand forces that do not fear him. 
The Opera is above all the theatre of secret influ- 
ences. Every mystery of its enormous and waste- 
ful inefficiency can be explained either by the opera- 
tion of the secret influence or by the operation of 
the bureaucratic mind. If the most tedious operas 
are played the most often, if the stage is held by 
singers who cannot sing, if original artists have no 
chance there, if the blight of a flaccid perf unctoriness 
is upon nearly all the performances, if astute moth- 
ers can sell the virginity of their dancing daughters 
to powerful purchasers in the wings, the reason is a 
reason of State. The Opera is the splendid prey 
of the high officers of State. If such a one wants an 
evening's entertainment, or a mistress, or to get rid 
of a mistress, the Opera is there, at his disposition. 
The foyer de la danse is the most wonderful seraglio 
in the western world, and it is reserved to the Gov- 
ernment and to subscribers. Thus is art fostered, 
and for this does the peasant pay. 



n^r p. 



r 



68 PARIS NIGHTS 

Nevertheless the Opera is a beautiful and impres- 
sive sight in the late, warm dusk of June. Against 
the deep purple sky the monument stands up like a 
mountain; and through its innumerable windows — 
holes in the floor of heaven — can be glimpsed yel- 
low clusters of candelabra and perspectives of mar- 
ble pillars and frescoed walls. And at the foot of 
the gigantic fapade little brightly coloured figures 
are running up the steps and disappearing eagerly 
within: they are the world of fashion, and they 
know that they are correct and that the Opera is the 
Opera. 

e7* «?* t?* t5* 

I looked over the crimson plush edge of the box 
down into Egypt, where Cleopatra was indulging 
her desires ; into a civilisation so gorgeous, primitive, 
and far-off that when compared to it the eighteenth 
and the twentieth centuries seemed as like as two peas 
in their sophistication and sobriety. Cleopatra had 
set eyes on a youth, and a whim for him had taken 
her. By no matter what atrocious exercise of power 
and infliction of suffering, that whim had to be 
satisfied on the instant. It was satisfied. And a 
swift homicide left the Queen untrammelled by any 
sentimental consequences. The whole affair was 
finished in a moment, and the curtain falling on all 
that violent and gorgeous scene. In a moment this 
Oriental episode, interpreted by semi-Oriental art- 
ists, had made all the daring prurient suggestiveness 
of French comedy seem timid and foolish. It was a 
revelation. A new standard was set, and there was 
not a vaudevillist in the auditorium but knew that 






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LES SVLPHIDES (Page 69) 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 69 

neither he nor his interpreters could ever reach that 
standard. The simple and childlike gestures of the 
slave-girls as with their bodies and their veils they 
formed a circular tent to hide Cleopatra and her 
lover — these gestures took away the breath of pro- 
test. 

The St. Petersburg and the Moscow troupes, 
united, of the Russian Imperial Ballet, had been 
brought to Paris, at vast expense and considerable 
loss, to present this astounding spectacle of mere 
magnificent sanguinary lubricity to the cosmopoli- 
tan fashion of Paris. There the audience actually 
was, rank after rank of crowded toilettes rising to the 
dim ceiling, young women from the Avenue du Bois 
and young women from Arizona, and their protec- 
tive and possessive men. And nobody blenched, no- 
body swooned. The audience was taken by assault. 
The West End of Europe was just staggered into 
acceptance. As yet London has seen only frag- 
ments of Russian ballet. But London may and 
probably will see the whole. Let there be no 
qualms. London will accept also. London might 
be horribly scared by one-quarter of the audacity 
shown in Cleopatra, but it will not be scared by the 
whole of that audacity. An overdose of a fatal 
drug is itself an antidote. The fact is, that the 
spectacle was saved by a sort of moral nudity, and 
by a naive assurance of its own beauty. Oh! It 
was extremely beautiful. It was ineffably more 
beautiful than any other ballet I had ever seen. An 
artist could feel at once that an intelligence of really 
remarkable genius had presided over its invention 



70 PARIS NIGHTS 

and execution. It was masterfully original from 
the beginning. It continually furnished new ideals 
of beauty. It had drawn its inspiration from some 
rich fountain unknown to us occidentals. Neither 
in its scenery, nor in its grouping, nor in its panto- 
mime was there any clear trace of that Italian influ- 
ence which still dominates the European ballet. 
With a vengeance it was a return to nature and a 
recommencement. It was brutally direct. It was 
beastlike; but the incomparable tig?r is a beast. It 
was not perverse. It was too fresh, zealous, and 
alive to be perverse. Personally I was conscious of 
the most intense pleasure that I had experienced in 
a theatre for years. And this was Russia! This 
was the country that had made such a deadly and 
disgusting mess of the Russo-Japanese War. 

t5* «•• e?* <?• 

The box was a stage-box. It consisted of a suite 
of two drawing-rooms, softly upholstered, lit with 
electric light, and furnished with easy-chairs and 
mirrors. A hostess might well have offered tea to 
a score of guests therein. And as a fact there were 
a dozen people in it. Its size indicated the dimen- 
sions of the auditorium, in which it was a mere cell. 
The curious thing about it was the purely incidental 
character of its relation to the stage. The front of 
it was a narrow terrace, like the mouth of a bottle, 
which offered a magnificent panorama of the audi- 
torium, with a longitudinal slice of the stage at one 
extremity. From the terrace one glanced vertically 
down at the stage, as at a street-pavement from a 
first-storey window. Three persons could be com- 




FRAGILE AND B2ALTIFLL ODALISQUES (Page 77) 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 71 

fortable, and four could be uncomfortable, on the 
terrace. One or two more, by leaning against chair- 
backs and coiffures, could see half of the longitud- 
inal slice of the stage. The remaining half-dozen 
were at liberty to meditate in the luxurious twilight 
of the drawing-room. The Republic, as operatic 
manager, sells every night some scores, and on its 
brilliant nights some hundreds, of expensive seats 
which it is perfectly well aware give no view what- 
ever of the stage: another illustration of the truth 
that the sensibility of the conscience of corporations 
varies inversely with the size of the corporation. 

But this is nothing. The wonderful aspect of 
the transaction is that purchasers never lack. They 
buy and suffer; they buy again and suffer yet 
again; they live on and reproduce their kind. 
There was in the hinterland of the box a dapper, viva- 
cious man who might (if he had wasted no time) 
have been grandfather to a man as old as I. He 
was eighty-five years old, and he had sat in boxes 
of an evening for over sixty years. He talked eas- 
ily of the heroic age before the Revolution of '48, 
when, of course, every woman was an enchantress, 
and the farces at the Palais Royal were really amus- 
ing. He could pipe out whole pages of farce. 
Except during the entr'actes this man's curiosity 
did not extend beyond the shoulders of the young 
women on the terrace. For him the spectacle might 
have been something going on round the corner of 
the next street. He was in a spacious and discreet 
drawing-room; he had the habit of talking; talking 
was an essential part of his nightly hygiene; and he 



72 PARIS NIGHTS 

talked. Continually impinging, in a manner 
fourth-dimensional, on my vision of Cleopatra's 
violent afternoon, came the "Je me rappelle" of this 
ancient. Now he was in Rome, now he was in Lon- 
don, and now he was in Florence. He went nightly 
to the Pergola Theatre when Florence was the capi- 
tal of Italy. He had tales of kings. He had one 
tale of a king which, as I could judge from the 
hard perfection of its phraseology, he had been re- 
peating on every night-out for fifty years. Accord- 
ing to this narration he was promenading the inevit- 
able pretty woman in the Cascine at Florence, when 
a heavily moustached person en civil flashed by, 
driving a pair of superb bays, and he explained not 
without pride to the pretty woman that she looked 
on a king. 

"It is that, the king?" exclaimed the pretty in- 
genue too loudly. 

And with a grand bow ( of which the present gen- 
eration has lost the secret) the moustaches, all flash- 
ing and driving, leaned from the equipage and an- 
swered : "Yes, madame, it is that, the king." 

<c Et si vous aviez vu la tete de la dame . . . f 

In those days society existed. 

I should have heard many more such tales during 
the entr'acte, but I had to visit the stage. Strictly, 
I did not desire to visit the stage, but as I possessed 
the privilege of doing so, I felt bound in pride to go. 
I saw myself at the great age of eighty-five re- 
counting to somebody else's grandchildren the mar- 
vels that I had witnessed in the coulisses of the 
Paris Opera during the unforgettable season of the 



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THE UNFORGETTABLE SEASON (Page 72) 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 73 

Russian Imperial Ballet in the early years of the 
century, when society existed. 

At an angle of a passage which connects the audi- 
torium with the tray (the stage is called the tray, 
and those who call the stage the stage at the Opera 
are simpletons and lack guile) were a table and a 
chair, and, partly on the chair and partly on the 
table, a stout respectable man: one of the twelve 
hundred. He looked like a town-councillor, and 
his life-work on this planet was to distinguish be- 
tween persons who had the entry and persons who 
had not the entry. He doubted my genuineness at 
once, and all the bureaucrat in him glowered from 
his eyes. Yes ! My card was all right, but it made 
no mention of madame. Therefore, I might pass, 
but madame might not. Moreover, save in cases 
very exceptional, ladies were not admitted to the 
tray. So it appeared ! I was up against an entire 
department of the State. Human nature is such 
that at that moment, had some power offered me the 
choice between the ability to write a novel as fine 
as Crime and Punishment and the ability to tri- 
umph instantly over the pestilent town-councillor, 
I would have chosen the latter. I retired in good 
order. ''You little suspect, town-councillor," I said 
to him within myself, "that I am the guest of the 
management, that I am extremely intimate with the 
management, and that, indeed, the management is 
my washpot!" At the next entr'acte I returned 
again with an omnipotent document which in- 
structed the whole twelve hundred to let both mon- 
sieur and madame pass anywhere, everywhere. The 



74 PARIS NIGHTS 

town-councillor admitted that it was perfect, so far 
as it went. But there was the question of my hat 
to be considered. I was not wearing the right kind 
of hat! The town councillor planted both his feet 
firmly on tradition, and defied imperial passports. 
"Can you have any conception," I cried to him within 
myself, "how much this hat cost me at Henry 
Heath's?" Useless! Nobody ever had passed, and 
nobody ever would pass, from the auditorium to the 
tray in a hat like mine. It was unthinkable. It 
would be an outrage on the Code Napoleon. . . . 
After all, the man had his life-work to perform. At 
length he offered to keep my hat for me till I came 
back. I yielded. I was beaten. I was put to 
shame. But he had earned a night's repose. 

J* (5* t5* t5* 

The famous, the notorious foyer de la danse was 
empty. Here was an evening given exclusively to 
the ballet, and not one member of the corps had had 
the idea of exhibiting herself in the showroom spe- 
cially provided by the State as a place or rendez- 
vous for ladies and gentlemen. The most precious 
quality of an annual subscription for a seat at the 
Opera is that it carries with it the entry to the 
foyer de la danse (provided one's hat is right) ; if it 
did not, the subscriptions to the Opera would as- 
suredly diminish. And lo ! the gigantic but tawdry 
mirror which gives a factitious amplitude to a room 
that is really small, did not reflect the limbs of a 
single dancer! The place had a mournful, shabby- 
genteel look, as of a resort gradually losing fashion. 
It was tarnished. It did not in the least correspond 



r 



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-vi 



' >£& 




AN HONEST MISS (Pa?e 75) 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 75 

with a young man's dreams of it. Yawning tedium 
hung in it like a vapour, that tedium which is the 
implacable secret enemy of dissoluteness. This, the 
foyer de la danse, where the insipidly vicious hero- 
ines of Halevy's ironic masterpiece achieved, with 
a mother's aid, their ducal conquests! It was as 
cruel a disillusion as the first sight of Rome or Jeru- 
salem. Its meretriciousness would not have de- 
ceived even a visionary parlour-maid. Neverthe- 
less, the world of the Opera was astounded at the 
neglect of its hallowed foyer by these young women 
from St. Petersburg and Moscow. I was told, with 
emotion, that on only two occasions in the whole 
season had a Russian girl wandered therein. The 
legend of the sobriety and the chastity of these 
strange Russians was abroad in the Opera like a 
strange, uncanny tale. Frankly, Paris could not 
understand it. Because all these creatures were 
young, and all of them conformed to some standard 
or other of positive physical beauty! They could 
not be old, for the reason that a ukase obliged them 
to retire after twenty years' service at latest ; that is, 
at about the age of thirty-six, a time of woman's life 
which on the Paris stage is regarded as infancy. 
Such a ukase must surely have been promulgated 
by Ivan the Terrible or Catherine! . . . No! 
Paris never recovered from the wonder of the fact 
that when they were not dancing these lovely girls 
were just honest misses, with apparently no taste 
for bank-notes and spiced meats, even in the fever 
of an unexampled artistic and fashionable success. 
Amid the turmoil of the stage, where the prodi- 



76 PARIS NIGHTS 

giously original peacock-green scenery of Schehera- 
zade was being set, a dancer could be seen here and 
there in a corner, waiting, preoccupied, worried, 
practising a step or a gesture. I was clumsy 
enough to encounter one of the principals who did 
not want to be encountered; we could not escape 
from each other. There was nothing for it but to 
shake hands. His face assumed the weary, unwill- 
ing smile of conventional politeness. His fingers 
were limp. 

"It pleases you?" 

"Enormously." 

I turned resolutely away at once, and with relief 
he lapsed back into his preoccupation concerning 
the half-hour's intense emotional and physical la- 
bour that lay immediately in front of him. In a 
few moments the curtain went up, and the terrific 
creative energy of the troupe began to vent itself. 
And I began to understand a part of the secret of 
the extreme brilliance of the Russian ballet. 

<?• «•• t?* «•• 

The brutality of Scheherazade was shocking. It 
was the Arabian Nights treated with imaginative 
realism. In perusing the Arabian Nights we never 
try to picture to ourselves the manners of a real 
Bagdad; or we never dare. We lean on the pictur- 
esque splendour and romantic poetry of certain 
aspects of the existence portrayed, and we shirk the 
basic facts : the crudity of the passions, and the su- 
perlative cruelty informing the whole social system. 
For example, we should not dream of dwelling on 
the more serious functions of the caliphian eunuchs. 



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SCHEHKKA/ADK iPaffe ?6t 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 77 

In the surpassing fury and magnificence of the Rus- 
sian ballet one saw eunuchs actually at work, scimi- 
tar in hand. There was the frantic orgy, and then 
there was the barbarous punishment, terrible and re- 
volting ; certainly one of the most sanguinary sights 
ever seen on an occidental stage. The eunuchs pur- 
sued the fragile and beautiful odalisques with 
frenzy; in an instant the seraglio was strewn with 
murdered girls in all the abandoned postures of 
death. And then silence, save for the hard breath- 
ing of the executioners! ... A thrill! It 
would seem incredible that such a spectacle should 
give pleasure. Yet it unquestionably did, and very 
exquisite pleasure. The artists, both the creative 
and the interpretative, had discovered an artistie 
convention which was at once grandiose and truth- 
ful. The passions displayed were primitive, but 
they were ennobled in their illustration. The per- 
formance was regulated to the least gesture ; no de- 
tail was unstudied; and every moment was beauti- 
ful ; not a few were sublime. 

And all this a by-product of Russian politics! 
If the politics of France are subtly corrupt ; if any- 
thing can be done in France by nepotism and influ- 
ence, and nothing without; if the governing ma- 
chine of France is fatally vitiated by an excessive 
and unimaginative centralisation — the same is far 
more shamefully true of Russia. The fantastic in- 
efficiency of all the great departments of State in 
Russia is notorious and scandalous. But the Im- 
perial ballet, where one might surely have presumed 
an intensification of every defect (as in Paris), 



78 PARIS NIGHTS 

happens to be far nearer perfection than any other 
enterprise of its kind, public or private. It is genu- 
inely dominated by artists of the first rank; it is in- 
vigorated by a real discipline; and the results 
achieved approach the miraculous. The pity is that 
the moujik can never learn that one, at any rate, of 
the mysterious transactions which pass high up over 
his head, and for which he is robbed, is in itself hon- 
est and excellent. An alleviating thought for the 
moujik, if only it could be knocked into his great 
thick head! For during the performance of the 
Russian Imperial Ballet at the Paris Opera, amid 
all the roods of toilettes and expensive correctness, 
one thinks of the moujik; or one ought to think of 
him. He is at the bottom of it. See him in Tche- 
koff's masterly tale, The Moujiks, in his dirt, 
squalor, drunkenness, lust, servitude, and despair! 
Realise him well at the back of your mind as you 
watch the ballet! Your delightful sensations be- 
fore an unrivalled work of art are among the things 
he has paid for. 

(5# (5* «?• €?• 

Walking home, I was attracted, within a few hun- 
dred yards of the Opera, by the new building of the 
Magasins du Printemps. Instead of being lighted 
up and all its galleries busy with thousands of 
women in search of adornment, it stood dark and 
deserted. But at one of the entrances was a feeble 
ray. I could not forbear going into the porch and 
putting my nose against the glass. The head- 
watchman was seated in the centre of the ground- 
floor chatting with a colleague. With a lamp and 




■CHIEF EL'NL'CH (Page 77) 



RUSSIAN IMPERIAL BALLET 79 

chairs they had constructed a little domesticity for 
themselves in the middle of that acreage of silks and 
ribbons and feathers all covered now with pale dust- 
sheets. They were the centre of a small sphere of 
illumination, and in the surrounding gloom could be 
dimly discerned gallery after gallery rising in a 
slender lacework of iron. The vision of Bagdad 
had been inexpressibly romantic ; but this vision also 
was inexpressibly romantic. There was something 
touching in the humanity of those simple men amid 
the vast nocturnal stillness of that organism — the 
most spectacular, the most characteristic, the most 
spontaneous, and perhaps the most beautiful sym- 
bol of an age which is just as full of romance as any 
other age. The human machine and the scenic pan- 
orama of the big shop have always attracted me, 
as in Paris so in London. And looking at this par- 
ticular, wonderful shop in its repose I could con- 
template better the significance of its activity. 
What singular ideals have the women who passion- 
ately throng it in the eternal quest ! I say "passion- 
ately," because I have seen eyes glitter with fierce 
hope in front of a skunk boa or the tints of a new 
stuff, translating instantly these material things 
into terms of love and adoration. What cruelty is 
hourly practised upon the other women who must 
serve and smile and stand on their feet in the stuffi- 
ness of the heaped and turbulent galleries eleven 
hours a day six full days a week ; and upon the still 
other women, unpresentable, who in their high gar- 
rets stitch together these confections! And how 
fine and how inspiriting it all is, this fever, and these 



80 PARIS NIGHTS 

delusive hopes, and this cruelty! The other women 
are asleep now, repairing damage; but in a very 
few hours they will be converging here in long hur- 
ried files from the four quarters of Paris, in their 
enforced black, and tying their black aprons, and 
pinning on their breasts the numbered discs which 
distinguish them from one another in the judgment- 
books of the shop. They will be beginning again. 
The fact is that Bagdad is nothing to this. Only 
people are so blind. 



LIFE IN LONDON— 1911 



THE RESTAURANT 



You have a certain complacency in entering it, 
because it is one of the twenty monster restaurants 
of London. The name glitters in the public mind. 
"Where shall we dine?" The name suggests it- 
self; by the immense force of its notoriety it comes 
unsought into the conversation like a thing alive. 
"All right ! Meet you in the Lounge at 7.45." You 
feel— whatever your superficial airs— that you are 
in the whirl of correctness as you hurry (of course 
late) out of a taxi into the Lounge. There is some- 
thing about the word "Lounge" . . .! Space 
and freedom in the Lounge, and a foretaste of lux- 
ury ; and it is inhabited by the haughty of the earth! 
You are not yet a prisoner, in the Lounge. Then 
an official, with the metallic insignia of authority, 
takes you apart. He is very deferential— but with 
the intimidating deference of a limited company that 
pays forty per cent. You can go upstairs— though 
he doubts if there is immediately a table — or you 
can go downstairs. (Strange, how in the West- 
End, when once you quit the street, you must al- 
ways go up or down; the planet's surface is forbid- 
den to you; you lose touch with it; the ground-land- 
lord has taken it and hidden it.) You go down- 
stairs; you are hypnotised into going downstairs; 



84 PARIS NIGHTS 

and you go down, and down, one of a procession, 
until a man, entrenched in a recess furnished to 
look like a ready-made tailor's, accepts half your 
clothing and adds it to his stock. He does not ask 
for it ; he need not ; you are hypnotised. Stripped, 
you go further down and down. You are now 
part of the tremendous organism; you have left 
behind not merely your clothing, but your volition; 
your number is in your hand. 

Suddenly, as you pass through a doorway, great 
irregular vistas of a subterranean chamber discover 
themselves to you, limitless. You perceive that 
this wondrous restaurant ramifies under all Lon- 
don, and that a table on one verge is beneath St. 
Paul's Cathedral, and a table on the other verge 
beneath the Albert Memorial. All the tables — all 
the thousands of tables — are occupied. An official 
comes to you, and, putting his mouth to your ear 
(for the din is terrific) , tells you that he will have a 
table for you in three minutes. You wait, forlorn. 
It reminds you of waiting at the barber's for a 
shave, except that the barber gives you an easy-chair 
and a newspaper. Here you must stand ; and you 
must gather your skirts about you and stand firm to 
resist the shock of blind waiters. Others are in 
your case; others have been waiting longer than 
you, and at every moment more arrive. You wait. 
The diners see you waiting, and you wonder whether 
they are eating slowly on purpose. . . . At 
length you are led away — far, far from the pit's 
mouth into a remote working of the mine. You 
watch a man whisk away foul plates and glasses, 










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? «;,ft^MW" 



HE IS VERY DEFERENTIAL (Page S3) 



THE RESTAURANT 85 

and cover off ence with a pure white cloth. You sit. 
You are saved ! And human nature is such that you 
feel positively grateful to the limited com- 
pany. . . . 

t5* (5* t5* «5* 

You begin to wait again, having been deserted 
by your saviours. And then your wandering at- 
tention notices behind you, under all the other 
sounds, a steady sound of sizzling. And there fat, 
greasy men, clothed and capped in white, are throw- 
ing small fragments of animal carcases on to a 
huge, red fire, and pulling them off in the nick of 
time, and flinging them on to plates which are con- 
tinually being snatched away by flying hands. 
The grill, as advertised! And you wait, helpless, 
through a period so long that if a live cow and a 
live sheep had been led into the restaurant to sat- 
isfy the British passion for realism in eating, there 
would have been time for both animals to be mur- 
dered, dismembered, and fried before the gaze of 
a delighted audience. But fear not. The deity 
of the organism, though unseen, is watching over 
you. You have not been omitted from the divine 
plan. Presently a man approaches with a gigan- 
tic menu, upon which are printed the names of 
hundreds of marvellous dishes, and you can have 
any of them — and at most reasonable prices. 
Only, you must choose at once. You must say in- 
stantly to the respectful but inexorable official ex- 
actly what you will have. You are lost in the menu 
as in a labyrinth, as in a jungle at nightfall. . . . 
Quick! For, as you have waited, so are others 



86 PARIS NIGHTS 

waiting! Out with it! You drop the menu. 
''Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding — Guinness." 
The magic phrase releases you. In the tenth of a 
second the official has vanished. A railway truck 
laden with the gifts of Cuba and Sumatra and the 
monks of the Chartreuse, sweeps majestically by, 
blotting out the horizon; and lo! no sooner has it 
glided past than you see men hastening towards 
you with plates and bottles. With an astounding 
celerity the beef and the stout have arrived — out of 
the unknown and the unknowable, out of some se- 
cret place in the centre of the earth, where rows 
and rows of slices of beef and bottles of stout wait 
enchanted for your word. 

All the thousands of tables scintillate with linen 
and glass and silver, and steel and ivory, and are 
bright with flowers; ten thousand blossoms have 
been wrenched from their beds and marshalled here 
in captive regiments to brighten the beef and stout 
on which your existence depends. The carpet is a 
hot crimson bed of flowers. The whole of the ceil- 
ing is carved and painted and gilded; not a square 
inch of repose in the entire busy expanse of it ; and 
from it thousands of blinding electric bulbs hang 
down like stalactites. The walls are covered with 
enormous mirrors, perversely studded with gold 
nails, and framed in gold sculpture. And these 
mirrors fling everything remorselessly back at you. 
So that the immensity and glow of the restau- 
rant are multiplied to infinity. The band is fight- 
ing for its life. An agonised violinist, swaying 
and contorting in front of the band, squeezes the 



iU 



-v'V 't, - f * 



v>; K? ^ 







THE RESTAURANT (Page St) 



THE RESTAURANT 87 

last drop of juice out of his fiddle. The "selec- 
tion" is "Carmen." But "Carmen" raised to the 
second power, with every piano, forte, allegro, and 
adagio exaggerated to the last limit; "Carmen" 
composed by Souza and executed by super-Sicil- 
ians; a "Carmen" deafening and excruciating! 
And amid all this light and sound, amid the music 
and the sizzling, and the clatter of plates and glass, 
and the reverberation of the mirrors, and the whir- 
ring of the ventilators, and the sheen of gold, and 
the harsh glitter of white, and the dull hum of 
hundreds of strenuous conversations, and the hoarse 
cries of the pale demons at the fire, and the haste, 
and the crowdedness, and the people waiting for 
your table— you eat. You practise the fine art of 

dining. 

In a paroxysm the music expires. The effect 
is as disconcerting as though the mills of God had 
stopped. Applause, hearty and prolonged, re- 
sounds in the bowels of the earth. . . . You 
learn that the organism exists because people really 
like it. 

^ «* * <* 

This is a fearful and a romantic place. Those 
artists who do not tingle to the romance of it are 
dead and have forgotten to be buried. The ro- 
mance of it rises grandiosely storey beyond storey. 
For you must know that while you are dining in the 
depths, the courtesans and their possessors are din- 
ing in the skies. And the most romantic and im- 
pressive thing about it all is the invisible secret 
thoughts, beneath the specious bravery, of the un- 



88 PARIS NIGHTS 

countable multitude gathered together under the 
spell of the brains that invented the organism. 
Can you not look through the transparent faces of 
the young men with fine waistcoats and neglected 
boots, and of the young women with concocted hats 
and insecure gay blouses, and of the waiters whose 
memories are full of Swiss mountains and Italian 
lakes and German beer gardens, and of the violinist 
who was proclaimed a Kubelik at the Conservatoire 
and who now is carelessly pronounced "jolly good" 
by eaters of beefsteaks ? Can you not look through 
and see the wonderful secret pre-occupations? If 
so, you can also pierce walls and floors, and see 
clearly into the souls of the cooks and the sub-cooks, 
and the cellar-men, and the commissionaires in the 
rain, and the washers-up. They are all there, in- 
cluding the human beings with loves and ambitions 
who never do anything for ever and ever but wash 
up. These are wistful, but they are not more wist- 
ful than the seraphim and cherubim of the upper 
floors. The place is grandiose and imposing; it 
has the dazzle of extreme success; but when you 
have stared it down it is wistful enough to make 
you cry. 

Accidentally your eye rests on the gorgeous frieze 
in front of you, and after a few moments, among 
the complex scrollwork and interlaced Cupids, you 
discern a monogram, not large, not glaring, not 
leaping out at you, but concealed in fact rather 
modestly! You decipher the monogram. It con- 
tains the initials of the limited company paying 




THK BAND (Page 86) 



THE RESTAURANT 89 

forty per cent, and also of the very men whose 
brains invented the organism. They are men. 
They may be great men: they probably are; but 
they are men. 



II 

BY THE RIVER 

Every morning I get up early, and, going 
straight to the window, I see half London from an 
eighth-storey. I see factory chimneys poetised, 
and the sign of a great lion against the sky, and the 
dome of St. Paul's rising magically out of the mist, 
and pearl-coloured minarets round about the hori- 
zon, and Waterloo Bridge suspended like a dream 
over the majestic river; and all that sort of thing. 
I am obliged, in spite of myself, to see London 
through the medium of the artistic sentimentalism 
of ages. I am obliged even to see it through the 
individual eyes of Claude Monet, whose visions of 
it I nevertheless resent. I do not want to see, for 
example, Waterloo Bridge suspended like a dream 
over the majestic river. I much prefer to see it 
firmly planted in the plain water. And I ulti- 
mately insist on so seeing it. The Victoria Em- 
bankment has been, and still is, full of pitfalls for 
the sentimentalist in art as in sociology; I would 
walk warily to avoid them. The river at dawn, the 
river at sunset, the river at midnight (with its 
myriad lamps, of course) ! . . . Let me have 
the river at eleven a. m. for a change, or at tea-time. 
And let me patrol its banks without indulging in 
an orgy of melodramatic contrasts. 

90 



BY THE RIVER 91 

I will not be carried away by the fact that the 
grand hotels, with their rosy saloons and fair 
women (not invariably or even generally fair!), 
look directly down upon the homeless wretches hud- 
dled on the Embankment benches. Such a juxta- 
position is accidental and falsifying. Nor will I 
be imposed upon by the light burning high in the 
tower of St. Stephen's to indicate that the legisla- 
tors are watching over Israel. I think of the House 
of Commons at question-time, and I hear the rus- 
tling as two hundred schoolboyish human beings 
(not legislators nor fathers of their country) si- 
multaneously turn over a leaf of two hundred ques- 
tion-papers, and I observe the self-consciousness of 
honourable members as they walk in and out, and 
the naive pleasure of the Labour member in his enor- 
mous grey wideawake, and the flower in the but- 
tonhole of the white-haired and simple ferocious 
veteran of democracy, and the hobnobbing over 
stewed tea and sultana on the draughty terrace. 

Nor, when I look at the finely symbolic architec- 
ture of New Scotland Yard, will I be obsessed by 
the horrors of the police system and of the prison 
system and by the wrongness of the world. I re- 
gard with fraternal interest the policeman in his 
shirt-sleeves lolling at a fourth-floor window. 
Thirty, twenty, years ago people used to be stag- 
gered by the sudden discovery that, in the old He- 
braic sense of the word, there was no God. It 
winded them, and some of them have never got 
over it. Nowadays people are being staggered by 
the sudden discovery that there is something funda- 



92 PARIS NIGHTS 

mentally wrong with the structure of society. 
This discovery induces a nervous disease which runs 
through whole thoughtful multitudes. I suffer 
from it myself. Nevertheless, just as it is certain 
that there is a God, of some kind, so it is certain 
that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the 
structure of society. There is something wrong — 
but it is not fundamental. There always has been 
and always will be something wrong. Do you sup- 
pose, O reformer, that when land-values are taxed, 
and war and poverty and slavery and overwork 
and underfeeding and disease and cruelty have dis- 
appeared, that the structure of society will seem a 
whit the less wrong? Never! A moderate sense 
of its wrongness is precisely what most makes life 
worth living. 

<5* t?* t?w t5» 

Between my lofty dwelling and the river is a 
large and beautiful garden, ornamented with stat- 
ues of heroes. It occupies ground whose annual 
value is probably quite ten thousand pounds — that 
is to say, the interest on a quarter of a million. It 
is tended by several County Council gardeners, who 
spend comfortable lives in it, and doubtless thereby 
support their families in dignity. Its lawns are 
wondrous; its parterres are full of flowers, and its 
statues are cleansed perhaps more thoroughly than 
the children of the poor. This garden is, as a rule, 
almost empty. I use it a great deal, and sometimes 
I am the only person in it. Its principal occupants 
are well-dressed men of affairs, who apparently 



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IN THE EMBANKMENT GARDENS (Page 92) 



BY THE RIVER 93 

employ it, as I do, as a ground for reflection. 
Nursemaids bring into it the children of the rich. 
The children of the poor are not to be seen in it — ■ 
they might impair the lawns, or even commit the 
horrible sin of picking the blossoms. During the 
only hours when the poor could frequent it, it is 
thoughtfully closed. The poor pay, and the rich 
enjoy. If I paid my proper share of the cost of 
that garden, each of my visits would run me into 
something like half-a-sovereign. My pleasure is 
being paid for up all manner of side-streets. This 
is wrong; it is scandalous. I would, and I will, 
support any measure that promises to rectify the 
wrongness. But in the meantime I intend to have 
my fill of that garden, and to savour the great sen- 
sations thereof. I will not be obsessed by one as- 
pect of it. 

The great sensations are not perhaps what one 
would have expected to be the great sensations. 
Neither domes, nor towers, nor pinnacles, nor spec- 
tacular contrasts, nor atmospheric effects, nor the 
Wordsworthian "mighty heart"! It is the County 
Council tram, as copied from Glasgow and Man- 
chester, that appeals more constantly and more 
profoundly than anything else of human creation 
to my romantic sensibility "Yes," I am told, "the 
tram-cars look splendid at night!" I do not mean 
specially at night. I mean in the day. And fur- 
ther, I have no desire to call them ships, or to call 
them aught but tram-cars. For me they resemble 
just tram-cars, though I admit that when forty or 



94 PARIS NIGHTS 

fifty of them are crowded together, they remind me 
somewhat of a herd of elephants. They are enor- 
mous and beautiful; they are admirably designed, 
and they function perfectly; they are picturesque, 
inexplicable, and uncanny. They come to rest with 
the gentleness of doves, and they hurtle through 
the air like shells. Their motion — smooth, delicate 
and horizontal — is always delightful. They are 
absolutely modern, new, and original. There was 
never anything like them before, and only when 
something different and better supersedes them will 
their extraordinary gliding picturesqueness be ap- 
preciated. They never cease. They roll along 
day and night without a pause ; in the middle of the 
night you can see them glittering away to the ends 
of the county. At six o'clock in the morning 
they roll up over the horizon of Westminster 
Bridge in hundreds incessantly, and swing down- 
wards and round sharply away from the Parlia- 
ment which for decades refused them access to their 
natural gathering-place. They are a thrilling 
sight. And see the pigmy in the forefront of each 
one, rather like a mahout on the neck of an ele- 
phant, doing as he likes with the obedient mon- 
ster! And see the scores of pigmies inside each of 
them, black dots that jump out like fleas and dis- 
appear like fleas! The loaded tram stops, and in 
a moment it is empty, and of the contents there is 
no trace. The contents are dissolved in London. 
. . . And then see London precipitate the con- 
tents again; and watch the leviathans, gorged, 



BY THE RIVER 95 

glide off in endless procession to spill immortal souls 
in the evening suburbs ! 

<?• «?* e5* (5* 

But the greatest sensation offered by the garden, 
though it happens to be a mechanical contrivance, 
is entirely independent of the County Council. It 
is — not the river — but the movement of the tide. 
Imagination is required in order to conceive the 
magnitude, the irresistibility, and the consequences 
of this tremendous shuttle-work, which is regulated 
from the skies, rules the existence of tens of thou- 
sands of people, and casually displaces incalculable 
masses of physical matter. And the curious human 
thing is that it fails to rouse the imagination of the 
town. It cleaves through the town, and yet is ut- 
terly foreign to it, having been estranged from it 
by the slow evolutionary process. All those tram- 
cars roll up over the horizon of Westminster 
Bridge, and cross the flood and run for a mile on 
its bank, and not one man in every tenth tram-car 
gives the faintest attention to the state of the river. 
A few may carelessly notice that the tide is "in" 
or "out," but how many realise the implications? 
For all they feel, the river might be a painted 
stream! No wonder that the touts crying "Steam- 
boat! Steamboat!" have a mournful gesture, and 
the "music on board" sounds thin, like a hallucina- 
tion, as the shabby paddle-wheels pound the water ! 
The cause of the failure of municipal steamers is 
more recondite than the yellow motor-cars of the 
journals which took pride in having ruined them. 



96 PARIS NIGHTS 

And the one satisfactory inference from the failure 
is that human nature is far less dependent on non- 
human nature than vague detractors of the former 
and devotees of the latter would admit. It is, after 
all, rather fine to have succeeded in ignoring the 
Thames ! 



Ill 

THE CLUB 

It was founded for an ideal. Its scope is na- 
tional, and its object to regenerate the race, to 
remedy injustice, and to proclaim the brotherhood 
of mankind. It is for the poor against the pluto- 
crat, and for the slave against the tyrant, and for 
democracy against feudalism. It is, in a word, of 
the kingdom of heaven. It was born amid im- 
mense collisions, and in the holy war it is the of- 
ficial headquarters of those who are on the side of 
the angels. In its gigantic shadow the weak and 
the oppressed sell newspapers and touch their hats 
to the warriors as they pass in and pass out. 

The place is as superb as its ideal. No half 
measures were taken when it was conceived and 
constructed. Its situation is among the most ex- 
pensive and beautiful in the world of cities. Its 
architecture is grandiose, its square columned hall 
and its vast staircase (hewn from Carrara) are two 
of the sights of London. It is like a town, but a 
town of Paradise. When the warrior enters its 
portals he is confronted by instruments and docu- 
ments which inform him with silent precision of 
the time, the temperature, the barometric pressure, 
the catalogue of nocturnal amusements, and the 
colour of the government that happens to be in 

9T 



98 PARIS NIGHTS 

power. The last word spoken in Parliament, the 
last quotation on the Stock Exchange, the last 
wager at Newmarket, the last run scored at cricket, 
the result of the last race, the last scandal, the last 
disaster — all these things are specially printed for 
him hour by hour, and pinned up unavoidably be- 
fore his eyes. If he wants to bet, he has only to put 
his name on a card entitled "Derby Sweepstake." 
Valets take his hat and stick; others (working sev- 
enty hours a week) shave him; others polish his 
boots. 

(?• *?• *?• t?* 

The staircase being not for use, but merely to 
immortalise the memory of the architect, he is 
wafted upwards by a lift into a Titanic apartment 
studded with a thousand easy-chairs, and furnished 
with newspapers, cigars, cigarettes, implements of 
play, and all the possibilities of light refection. He 
lapses into a chair, and lo! a bell is under his hand. 
Ting! And a uniformed and initialled being 
stands at attention in front of him, not speaking 
till he speaks, and receiving his command with the 
formalities of deference. He wishes to write a let- 
ter — a table is at his side, with all imaginable sta- 
tionery; a machine offers him a stamp, another licks 
the stamp, and an Imperial letter-box is within 
reach of his arm, — it is not considered sufficient 
that there should be a post-office, with young 
girls who have passed examinations, in the build- 
ing itself. He then chats, while sipping and smok- 
ing, or nibbling a cake, with other reclining war- 
riors; and the hum of their clatter rises steadily 




HE SLUMBERS ALONE (Page 99) 



THE CLUB 



99 

uni- 



from the groups of chairs, inspiring the 
formed and initialled beings who must not speak 
till spoken to with hopes of triumphant democracy 
and the millennium. For when they are not discuss- 
ing more pacific and less heavenly matters, the 
warriors really do discuss the war, and how they 
fought yesterday, and how they will fight to-mor- 
row. If at one moment the warrior is talking 
about "a perfectly pure Chianti that I have brought 
from Italy in a cask," at the next he is planning to 
close public-houses on election days. 

When he has had enough of such amiable gossip 
he quits the easy chair, in order to occupy another 
one in another room where he is surrounded by all 
the periodical literature of the entire world, and 
by the hushed murmur of intellectual conversation 
and the discreet stirring of spoons in tea-cups. 
Here he acquaints himself with the progress of the 
war and the fluctuations of his investments and the 
price of slaves. And when even the solemnity of 
this chamber begins to offend his earnestness, he 
glides into the speechless glamour of an enormous 
library, where the tidings of the day are repeated 
a third time, and, amid the companionship of a 
hundred thousand volumes and all the complex ap- 
paratus of research, he slumbers, utterly alone. 

Late at night, when he has eaten and drunk, and 
played cards and billiards and dominoes and 
draughts and chess, he finds himself once more in 
the smoking-room— somehow more intimate now— 
with a few cronies, including one or two who out in 
the world are disguised as the enemy. The atmos- 



100 PARIS NIGHTS 

phere of the place has put him and them into a sort 
of exquisite coma. Their physical desires are as- 
suaged, and they know by proof that they are in 
control of the most perfectly organised mechanism 
of comfort that was ever devised. Naught is for- 
gotten, from the famous wines cooling a long age 
in the sub-basement, to the inanimate chauffeur in 
the dark, windy street, waiting and waiting till a 
curt whistle shall start him into assiduous life. 
They know that never an Oriental despot was bet- 
ter served than they. Here alone, and in the man- 
sions of the enemy, has the true tradition of service 
been conserved. In comparison, the most select 
hotels and restaurants are a hurly-burly of crude 
socialism. The bell is under the hand, and the la- 
belled menial stands with everlasting patience near ; 
and home and women are far away. And the 
world is not. 

Forgetting the platitudes of the war, they talk 
of things as they are. All the goodness of them 
comes to the surface, and all the weakness. They 
state their real ambitions and their real prefer- 
ences. They narrate without reserve their secret 
grievances and disappointments. They are naked 
and unashamed. They demand sympathy, and 
they render it, in generous quantities. And while 
thus dissipating their energy, they honestly imagine 
that they are renewing it. The sense of reality 
gradually goes, and illusion reigns — the illusion 
that, after all, God is geometrically just, and that 
strength will be vouchsafed to them according to 



THE CLUB 101 

their need, and that they will receive the reward of 
perfect virtue. 

And their illusive satisfaction is chastened and 
beautified by the consciousness that the sublime in- 
stitution of the club is scarcely what it was, — is in 
fact decadent; and that if it were not vitalised by 
a splendid ideal, even their club might wilt under 
the sirocco of modernity. And then the echoing 
voice of an attendant warns them, with deep re- 
spect, that the clock moves. But they will not 
listen, cannot listen. And the voice of the attend- 
ant echoes again, and half the lights shockingly ex- 
pire. But still they do not listen; they cannot 
credit. And then, suddenly, they are in utter dark- 
ness, and by the glimmer of a match are stumbling 
against easy-chairs and tables, real easy-chairs and 
real tables. The spell of illusion is broken. And 
in a moment they are thrust out, by the wisdom of 
their own orders, into Pall Mall, into actuality, into 
the world of two sexes once more. 

e5* <5* t5* t5* 

And yet the sublime institution of the club is 
not a bit anaemic. Within a quarter of a mile is the 
monumental proof that the institution has been re- 
juvenated and ensanguined and empowered. Co- 
lossal, victorious, expensive, counting its adherents 
in thousands upon thousands, this monument scorns 
even the pretence of any ancient ideal, and adopts 
no new one. The aim of the club used ostensibly 
to be peace, idealism, a retreat, a refuge. The new 
aim is pandemonium, and it is achieved. The new 



102 PARIS NIGHTS 

aim is to let in the world, and it is achieved. The 
new aim is muscular, and it is achieved. Arms, 
natation, racquets — anything to subdue the soul 
and stifle thought! And in the reading-room, 
dummy books and dummy book-cases ! And a din- 
ing-room full of bright women; and such a mad 
competition for meals that glasses and carafes will 
scarce go round, and strangers must sit together at 
the same small table without protest! And, to 
crown the hullaballoo, an orchestra of red-coated 
Tziganes swaying and yearning and ogling in or- 
der to soothe your digestion and to prevent you 
from meditating. 

This club marks the point to which the evolution 
of the sublime institution has attained. It has 
come from the shore of Lake Michigan; it is the 
club of the future, and the forerunner of its kind. 
Stand on its pavement, and watch its entering 
heterogeneous crowds, and then throw the glance no 
more than the length of a cricket-pitch, and watch 
the brilliantly surviving representatives of feudal- 
ism itself ascending and descending the steps of 
the most exclusive club in England; and you will 
comprehend that even when the House of Lords 
goes, something will go — something unconsciously 
cocksure, and perfectly creased, and urbane, and 
dazzlingly stupid — that was valuable and beauti- 
ful. And you will comprehend politics better, and 
the profound truth that it takes all sorts to make a 
world. 






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THE CLU15 OF THE FUTURE (Page 102) 



IV 

THE CIRCUS 

The flowers heaped about the bronze fountain 
are for them. And so that they may have flowers 
all day long, older and fatter and shabbier women 
make their home round the fountain (modelled by 
a genius to the memory of one whose dream was to 
abolish the hardships of poverty), with a sugar- 
box for a drawing-room suite and a sack for a cur- 
tain; these needy ones live there, to the noise of 
water, with a secret society of newspaper-sellers, 
knowing intimately all the capacities of the sugar- 
box and sack; and on hot days they revolve round 
the fountain with the sun, for their only sunshade is 
the shadow of the dolphins. On every side of their 
habituated tranquillity the odours of petrol swirl. 
The great gaudy-coloured autobuses, brilliant as 
the flowers, swing and swerve and grind and sink 
and recover, and in the forehead of each is a black- 
ened demon, tremendously preoccupied, and so 
small and withdrawn as to be often unnoticed; and 
this demon rushes forward all day with his life in 
his hand and scores of other lives in his hand, for 
two pounds a week. When he stops by the foun- 
tain, he glances at the flowers unseeing, out of the 
depths of his absorption. He is piloting cargoes 
of the bright beings for whom the flowers are 
heaped. 

103 



104 PARIS NIGHTS 

Stand on the steps of the fountain, and look be- 
tween the autobuses and over the roofs of taxis and 
the shoulders of policemen, and you will see at 
eveiy hand a proof that the whole glowing place, 
with its flags gaily waving and its hubbub of rich 
hues, exists first and last for those same bright be- 
ings. If there is a cigar shop, if there is a necktie 
shop like Joseph's coat, it is to enable the male to cut 
a dash with those beings. And the life insurance 
office — would it continue if there were no bright 
beings to be provided for? And the restaurants! 
And the I chemists! And the music-hall! The 
sandwich-men are walking round and round with 
the names of the most beauteous lifted high on their 
shoulders. The leather shop is crammed with 
dressing-cases and hat-boxes for them. The jewel- 
ler is offering solid gold slave-bangles (because 
they like the feel of the shackle) at six pound ten. 

And above all there is the great establishment on 
the corner! An establishment raised by tradition 
and advertisement and sheer skill to the rank of a 
national institution, famous from Calgary to the 
Himalayas, far more famous and beloved than even 
the greatest poets and philanthropists. An insti- 
tution established on one of the seven supreme sites 
of the world! And it is all theirs, all for them! 
Coloured shoes, coloured frocks, coloured neck- 
laces, coloured parasols, coloured stockings, jabots, 
scents, hats, and all manner of flimsy stuffs whose 
names — such as Shantung — summon up in an in- 
stant the deep orientalism of the Occident: the in- 
numerable windows are a perfect riot of these de- 



THE CIRCUS 105 

licious affairs! Who could pass them by? This 
is a wondrous institution. Of a morning, before 
the heat of the day, you can see coming out of its 
private half -hidden portals (not the ceremonious 
glazed doors) black-robed young girls, with their 
hair down their backs, and the free gestures learnt 
at school and not yet forgotten, skipping off on I 
know not what important errands, earning part of 
a livelihood already in the service of those others. 
And at its upper windows appear at times more 
black-robed girls, and disappear, like charming 
prisoners in a castle. 

J* t5* «?* e5* 

The beings for whom the place exists come down 
all the curved vistas towards it, on foot or on wheel, 
all day in radiant droves. They are obliged at any 
rate to pass through it, for the Circus is their Clap- 
ham Junction, and the very gate of finery. Im- 
possible to miss it ! It leads to all coquetry, and all 
delights and dangers. And not only down the vis- 
tas are they coming, but they are shot along 
subterranean tubes, and hurried through endless 
passages, and flung up at last by lifts from the 
depths into the open air. And when you look at 
them you are completely baffled. Because they 
are English, and the most mysterious women on 
earth, save the Scandinavians. You cannot get at 
their secret; it consists in an impenetrable ideal. 
With the Latin you do come in the end to the solid 
marble of Latin practicalness; the Latin is per- 
fectly unromantic. But the romanticism of these 
English is something so recondite that no research 



106 PARIS NIGHTS 

and no analysis can approach it. Ibsen could 
never have made a play out of a Latin woman; 
but I tell you that, for me, every woman stepping 
off an autobus and exposing her ankles and her 
character as she dodges across the Circus, has the 
look in her face of an Ibsen heroine; she emanates 
romance and enigma; she is the potential main- 
spring of a late-Ibsen drama, the kind whose import 
no critic is ever quite sure of. This it is to be 
Anglo-Saxon, and herein is one of the grand major 
qualities of the streets of London. 

They are in this matter, I do believe, all alike, 
these creatures. You may encounter one so ugly 
and mannish 1 and grotesque that none but an Eng- 
lishman could take her to his arms, and even she 
has the ineffable romantic gaze. All the countless 
middle-aged women who support circulating li- 
braries have it ; the hair of a woman of fifty blows 
about her face romantically. All the nice, young- 
ish married women have it, those who think they 
know a thing or two. And as for the girls, the 
young girls, they show a romantic naivete which 
transcends belief; they are so fresh and so virginal 
and so loose-limbed and so obsessed by a mysterious 
ideal, that really (you think) the street is too peril- 
ous a place for them. And yet they go confidently 
about, either alone or in couples, or with young 
men at bottom as simple as themselves, and naught 
happens to them; they must be protected by their 
idealism. And now and then you will see a woman 
who is strictly and truly chic, in the extreme French 
sense — an amazing spectacle in our city of sloppy 



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FLOWER WOMEN (.Page 103) 



THE CIRCUS 107 

women who, while dreaming of dress for ten hours 
a day, cannot even make their blouses fasten de- 
cently — and this chic Parisianised creature herself 
will have kept her idealistic gaze! They all keep 
it. They die with it at seventy-five. Whatever 
adventure occurs to an Englishwoman, she remains 
spiritually innocent and naive. The Circus is 
bathed in the mood of these qualities. 

*?• *?■ i?* (?■ 

Towards dark it alters and is still the same. See 
it after the performances on a matinee day, surg- 
ing with heroines. See it at eight o'clock at night, 
a packed mass of taxis and automobiles, each the 
casket of a romantic creature, hurrying in pursuit 
of that ideal without a name. Later, the place is 
becalmed, and scarcely an Englishwoman is to be 
seen in it until after the theatres, when once again 
it is nationalised and feminised to an intense degree. 
The shops are black, and the flower-sellers are 
gone; but the electric skysigns are in violent activ- 
ity, and there is light enough to see those baffling 
faces as they flash or wander by. And the trains 
are now bearing the creatures away in the deep-laid 
tubes. 

And then there comes an hour when the hidden 
trains have ceased, and the autobuses have nearly 
ceased, and the bright beings have withdrawn them- 
selves until the morrow; and now, on all the foot- 
paths of the Circus, move crowded processions of 
men young and old, slowly, as though in the per- 
formance of a rite. It leads to nothing, this tramp- 
ing ; it serves no end ; it is merely idiotic, in a pecul- 



108 PARIS NIGHTS 

iarly Anglo-Saxon way. But only heavy rain can 
interfere with it. It persists obstinately. And 
the reason of it is that the Circus is the Circus. 
And after all, though idiotic, it has the merit and 
significance of being instinctive. The Circus sym- 
bolises the secret force which drives forward the 
social organism through succeeding stages of evo- 
lution. The origin of every effort can be seen at 
some time of day emerging from a crimson autobus 
in the Circus, or speeding across the Circus in a 
green taxi. The answer to the singular conundrum 
of the City is to be found early or late in the Circus. 
The imponderable spirit of the basic fact of society 
broods in the Circus forever. Despite all changes, 
there is no change. I say no change. You may 
gaze into the jeweller's shop at the gold slave-ban- 
gles, which cannot be dear at six pound ten, since 
they express the secret attitude of an entire sex. 
And then you may turn and gaze at the face of a 
Suffragette, with her poster and her armful of pa- 
pers, and her quiet voice and her mien of pride. 
And you may think you see a change fundamental 
and terrific. Look again. 




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IMCCADII.LV CIRCUS (Paffe 70S) 



THE BANQUET 

In every large London restaurant, and in many 
small ones, there is a spacious hall (or several) cur- 
tained away from the public, in which every night 
strange secret things go on. Few suspect, and 
still fewer realise, the strangeness of these secret 
things. In the richly decorated interior (some- 
times marked with mystic signs), at a table which 
in space reaches from everlasting to everlasting, and 
has the form of a grill or a currycomb or the end 
of a rake — at such a table sit fifty or five hundred 
males. They are all dressed exactly alike, in black 
and white ; but occasionally they display a coloured 
flower, and each man bears exactly the same spe- 
cies and tint and size of flower, so that you think 
of regiments of flowers trained throughout their 
lives in barracks to the end of shining for a night 
in unison on the black and white bosoms of these 
males. Although there is not even a buffet in the 
great room, and no sign of the apparatus of a res- 
taurant, all these males are eating a dinner, and 
it is the same dinner. They do not wish to choose ; 
they accept, reading the menu like a decree of fate. 
They do not inquire upon the machinery; a slave, 
unglanced at, places a certain quantity of a dish in 
front of them — and lo! the same quantity of the 

109 



110 PARIS NIGHTS 

same dish is in front of all of them; they do not 
ask whence nor how it came; they eat, with indus- 
try, knowing that at a given moment, whether they 
have finished or not, a hand will steal round from 
behind them, and the plate will vanish into limbo. 
Thus the repast continues, ruthlessly, under the 
aquiline gaze of a slave who is also a commander- 
in-chief, manoeuvring his men silently, manoeuvr- 
ing them with naught but a glance. With one 
glance he causes to disappear five hundred salad- 
plates, and with another he conjures from behind 
a screen five hundred ices, each duly below zero, 
and each calculated to impede the digesting of a 
salad. The service of the dinner is a miracle, but 
the diners, absorbed in the expectancy of rites to 
come, reck not ; they assume the service as they as- 
sume the rising of the sun. Only a few remember 
the old, old days, in the 'eighties (before a cabal of 
international Jews had put their heads together 
and inaugurated a new age of miracles), when 
these solemn repasts were a scramble and a guerilla, 
after which one half of the combatants went home 
starving, and the other half went home glutted and 
drenched. Nowadays these repasts are the most 
perfectly democratic in England; and anybody 
who has ever assisted at one knows by a morsel of 
experience what life would be if the imaginative 
Tory's nightmare of Socialism were to become a 
reality. But each person has enough, and has it 
promptly. 

i5* c?* «5* (?• 

The ceremonial begins with a meal, because it 






2^" 



FROM BAYS WATER TO THE CIRCUS (Page 105 



THE BANQUET 111 

would be impossible on an empty stomach. Its 
object is ostensibly either to celebrate the memory 
of some deed or some dead man, or to signalise the 
triumph of some living contemporary. Clubs and 
societies exist throughout London in hundreds ex- 
pressly for the execution of these purposes, and 
each 1 of them is a remunerative client of a large res- 
taurant. Societies even exist solely in order to 
watch for the triumphs of contemporaries, and to 
gather in the triumphant to a repast and inform 
them positively that they are great. So much so 
that it is difficult to accomplish anything unusual, 
such as the discovery of one pole or another, or the 
successful defence of a libel action, without sub- 
mitting to the ordeal of these societies one after the 
other in a chain, and emerging therefrom with mod- 
esty ruined and the brazen conceit of a star actor. 
But the ostensible object is merely a cover for the 
real object, the unadmitted and often unsuspected 
object: which is, to indulge in a debauch of 
universal mutual admiration. When the physical 
appetite is assuaged, then the appetite for praise 
and sentimentality is whetted, and the design of the 
mighty institution of the banquet is to minister, in 
a manner majestic and unexceptionable, to this base 
appetite, whose one excuse is its naivete. 

A pleasurable and even voluptuous thrill of an- 
ticipation runs through the assemblage when the 
chairman rises to open the orgy. Everybody 
screws himself up, as a fiddler screwing the pegs of 
a fiddle, to what he deems the correct pitch of ap- 
preciativeness ; and almost the breath is held. And 



112 PARIS NIGHTS 

the chairman says: "Whatever differences may di- 
vide us upon other subjects, I am absolutely con- 
vinced, and I do not hesitate to state my convic- 
tion in the clearest possible way, that we are enthusi- 
astically and completely agreed upon one point," 
the point being that such and such a person or such 
and such a work is the greatest person or the great- 
est work of the kind in the whole history of the hu- 
man race. And although the point is one utterly 
inadmissible upon an empty stomach, although it 
is indeed a glaring falsity, everybody at once fever- 
ishly endorses it, either with shrill articulate cries, 
or with deep inarticulate booming, or with noises 
produced by the shock of flesh on flesh, or ivory on 
wood, or steel on crystal. The uproar is enor- 
mous. The chairman grows into a sacramental 
priest, or a philosopher of amazing insight and 
courage. And everybody says to himself: "I had 
not screwed myself up quite high enough," and 
proceeds to a further screwing. And in every 
heart is the thought: "This is grand! This is 
worth living for ! This alone is the true reward of 
endeavour!" And the corporate soul muses ecstat- 
ically: "This work, or this man, is ours, by reason 
of our appreciation and our enthusiasm. And he, 
or it, is ours exclusively." And, since the soul and 
the body are locked together in the closest sympa- 
thetic intimacy, all those cautious dyspeptic ones 
who have hitherto shirked danger, immediately put 
on courage like a splendid garment, and order the 
strongest drinks and the longest cigars that the es- 
tablishment can offer. The real world fades into 




FROM SOUTH LONDON TO THE CIRCUS {Page 105) 



THE BANQUET 113 

unreality; the morrow is lost in eternity; the mo- 
ment and the illusion alone are real. 

<?• *?• t?* c?* 

The key of the mood is to be sought less in the 
speeches as they succeed each other than in the ap- 
plause. For the applauders are not influenced by 
a sense of responsibility, or made self-conscious by 
publicity. They can be natural, and they are. 
What fear can prevent them from translating in- 
stantly their emotions into sound? By the ap- 
plause, if you are a slave and non-participator, you 
may correct your too kindly estimate of men in the 
mass. Note how the most outrageous exaggera- 
tion, the grossest flattery, the most banal platitude, 
the most fatuous optimism, gain the loudest ap- 
proval. Note how any reservation produces a fall 
of temperature. Note how the smallest jokes are 
seized on ravenously, as a worm by a young bird. 
And note always the girlish sentimentality, ever 
gushing forth, of these strong, hard-headed males 
whose habit is to proverbialise the sentimentality 
of women. 

The emotional crisis arrives. Feeling transcends 
the vehicle of speech, and escapes in song. And 
one guest, honoured either for some special deed of 
his own or because his name has been "coupled" 
with some historic deed or movement, remains sit- 
ting, in the most exquisite self-consciousness that 
human ingenuity ever brought about, while all the 
rest fling hoarsely at him the fifteen sacred words 
of a refrain which in its incredible vulgarity sur- 
passes even the National Anthem. 



114 PARIS NIGHTS 

The reaction is now not far off. But owing to 
several reasons it is postponed yet awhile. The 
honoured guest's response is one of the chief attrac- 
tions of the night. Very many diners have been 
drawn to the banquet by the desire to inspect the 
honoured guest at their leisure, to see his antics, to 
divine his human weaknesses and his ridiculous side. 
And, moreover, the honoured guest must give praise 
for praise, and lie for lie. He is bound by the 
strictest conventions of social intercourse to say in 
so many words: "Gentlemen, you are the most en- 
lightened body of men that I ever had the good 
fortune to meet; and your hospitality is the great- 
est compliment that I have ever had, or ever shall 
have, or could conceive. Each of you is a prince 
of the earth. And I am a worm . . ." And 
then there are the minor speeches, finishing off in 
detail the vast embroidery of laudation which was 
begun by the Chairman. Everybody is more or 
less enfolded in that immense mantle. And every- 
body is satisfied and sated, save those who have sat 
through the night awaiting the sweet mention of 
their own names, and who have been disappointed. 
At every banquet there are such. And it is they 
who, by their impatience, definitely cause the re- 
action at last. The speakers who terminate the af- 
fair fight against the reaction in vain. The ap- 
plause at the close is perfunctory — how different 
from the fever of the commencement and the hys- 
teria of the middle! The illusion is over. The 
emotional debauch is finished. The adult and 
bearded boys have played the delicious make-believe 



THE BANQUET 115 

of being truly great, and the game is at an end; 
and each boy, looking within, perceives without too 
much surprise that he is after all only himself. A 
cohort "of the best," foregathered in the cloak- 
room, say to each other, "Delightful evening! 
Splendid! Ripping!" And then one says, iron- 
ically leering, in a low voice, and a tone heavy with 
realistic disesteem: "Well, what do you think 
of — ?" Naming the lion of the night. 



VI 

ONE OF THE CROWD 

He comes 1 out of the office, which is a pretty large 
one, with a series of nods — condescending, curt, in- 
different, friendly, and deferential. He has de- 
testations and preferences, even cronies; and if he 
has superiors, he has also inferiors. But whereas 
his fate depends on the esteem of a superior, the 
fate of no inferior depends on his esteem. When 
he nods deferentially he is bowing to an august 
power before which all others are in essence equal ; 
the least of his inferiors knows that. And the least 
of his inferiors will light, on the stairs, a cigarette 
with the same gesture, and of perhaps the same 
brand, as his own — to signalise the moment of free- 
dom, of emergence from the machine into human 
citizenship. Presently he is walking down the 
crammed street with one or two preferences or in- 
differences, and they are communicating with each 
other in slang, across the shoulders of jostling in- 
terrupters, and amid the shouts of newsboys and 
the immense roaring of the roadway. And at the 
back of his mind, while he talks and smiles, or 
frowns, is a clear vision of a terminus and a clock 
and a train. Just as the water-side man, wher- 
ever he may be, is aware, night and day, of the 
exact state of the tide, so this man carries in his 

116 




FROM WEST KENSINGTON TO THE CIRCUS (Page 105) 



ONE OF THE CROWD 117 

brain a time-table of a particular series of trains, 
and subconsciously he is always aware whether he 
can catch a particular train, and if so, whether he 
must hurry or may loiter. His case is not peculiar. 
He is just an indistinguishable man on the crowded 
footpaths, and all the men on the footpaths, like 
him, are secretly obsessed by the vision of a train 
just moving out of a station. 

He arrives at the terminus with only one com- 
panion; the rest, with nods, have vanished away 
at one street corner or another. Gradually he is 
sorting himself out. Both he and his companion 
know that there are a hundred and twenty seconds 
to spare. The companion relates a new humorous 
story of something unprintable, alleged to have 
happened between a man and a woman. The re- 
ceiver of the story laughs with honest glee, and is 
grateful, and the companion has the air of a bene- 
factor; which indeed he is, for these stories are 
the ready-money of social intercourse. The com- 
panion strides off, with a nod. The other remains 
solitary. He has sorted himself out, but only for 
a minute. In a minute he is an indistinguishable 
unit again, with nine others, in the compartment 
of a moving train. He reads an evening news- 
paper, which seems to have come into his hand of 
its own agency, for he catches it every night with 
a purely mechanical grasp as it flies in the street. 
He reads of deeds and misdeeds, and glances aside 
uneasily from the disturbing tides of restless men 
who will not let the social order alone. Suddenly, 
after the train has stopped several times, he folds 



118 PARIS NIGHTS 

up the newspaper as it is stopping again, and gets 
blindly out. As he surges up into the street on a 
torrent of his brothers, he seems less sorted than 
ever. The street into which he comes is broad and 
busy, and the same newspapers are flying in it. 
Nevertheless, the street is different from the streets 
of the centre. It has a reddish or a yellowish qual- 
ity of colour, and there is not the same haste in 
it. He walks more quickly now. He walks a long 
way up another broad street, in which rare auto- 
buses and tradesmen's carts rattle and thunder. 
The street gets imperceptibly quieter, and more 
verdurous. He passes a dozen side-streets, and at 
last he turns into a side-street. And this side- 
street is full of trees and tranquillity. It is so si- 
lent that to reach it he might have travelled seventy 
miles instead of seven. There are glimpses of yel- 
low and red houses behind thick summer verdure. 
His pace still quickens. He smiles to himself at 
the story, and wonders to whom he can present it 
on the morrow. And then he halts and pushes 
open a gate upon which is painted a name. And 
he is in a small garden, with a vista of a larger 
garden behind. And down the vista is a young- 
girl, with the innocence and grace and awkward- 
ness and knowingness of her years — sixteen; a lit- 
tle shabby, or perhaps careless, in her attire, but 
enchanting. She starts forward, smiling, and ex- 
claims : 

"Father!" 

Now he is definitely sorted out. 

«5* c5* «•* e5* 



ONE OF THE CROWD 119 

Though this man is one of the crowd, though 
nobody would look twice at him in Cannon Street, 
yet it is to the successful and felicitous crowd that 
he belongs. There are tens of thousands of his 
grade; but he has the right to fancy himself a bit. 
He can do certain difficult things very well — else 
how, in the fierce and gigantic struggle for money, 
should he contrive to get hold of five hundred 
pounds a year ? 

He is a lord in his demesne; nay, even a sort of 
eternal father. Two servants go in fear of him, 
because his wife uses him as a bogey to intimidate 
them. His son, the schoolboy, a mighty one at 
school, knows there is no appeal from him, and quite 
sincerely has an idea that his pockets are inexhaust- 
ible. Whenever his son has seen him called upon 
to pay he has always paid, and money has always 
been left in his pocket. His daughter adores and 
exasperates him. His wife, with her private sys- 
tem of visits, and her sufFragetting, and her inde- 
pendences, recognises ultimately in every conflict 
that the resultant of forces is against her and for 
him. When he is very benevolent he joins her in 
the game of pretending that they are equals. He 
is the distributor of joy. When he laughs, all 
laugh, and word shoots through the demesne that 
father is in a good humour. 

He laughs to-night. The weather is superb; it 
is the best time of the year in the suburbs. Twi- 
light is endless; the silver will not die out of the 
sky. He wanders in the garden, the others with 
him. He works potteringly. He shows himself 



120 PARIS NIGHTS 

more powerful than his son, both physically and 
mentally. He spoils his daughter, who is daily 
growing more mysterious. He administers flat- 
tery to his wife. He throws scraps of kindness to 
the servants. It is his wife who at last insists on 
the children going to bed. Lights show at the up- 
per windows. The kitchen is dark and silent. His 
wife calls to him from upstairs. He strolls round 
to the front patch of garden, stares down the side- 
road, sees an autobus slide past the end of it, shuts 
and secures the gate, comes into the house, bolts 
the front door, bolts the back door, inspects the 
windows, glances at the kitchen; finally, he extin- 
guishes the gas in the hall. Then he leaves the 
ground floor to its solitude, and on the first-floor 
peeps in at his snoring son, and admonishes his 
daughter through a door ajar not to read in bed. 
He goes to the chief bedroom, and locks himself 
therein with his wife; and yawns. The night has 
come. He has made his dispositions for the night. 
And now he must trust himself, and all that is his, 
to the night. A vague, faint anxiety penetrates 
him. He can feel the weight of five human beings 
depending on him; their faith in him lies heavy. 

In the middle of the night he wakes up, and is 
reminded of such-and-such a dish of which he par- 
took. He remembers what his wife said: "There's 
no doing anything with that girl" — the daughter 
— "I don't know what's come over her." And he 
thinks of all his son's faults and stupidities, and 
of what it will be to have two children adult. It 



ONE OF THE CROWD 121 

is true — there is no doing anything with either one 
or the other. Their characters are unchangeable 
— to be taken or left. This is one lesson he 
has learnt in the last ten years. And his wife 
. . . ! The whole organism of the demesne 
presents itself to him, lying awake, as most extra- 
ordinarily complicated. The garden alone, the 
rose-trees alone, — what a constant cause of solici- 
tude! The friction of the servants, — was one of 
them a thief or was she not? The landlord must 
be bullied about the roof. Then, new wall-papers ! 
A hinge! His clothes! His boots! His wife's 
clothes, and her occasional strange disconcerting 
apathy! The children's clothes! Rent! Taxes! 
Rates! Season-ticket! Subscriptions! Negligence 
of the newsvendor ! Bills ! Seaside holiday ! Er- 
ratic striking of the drawing-room clock ! The pain 
in his daughter's back! The singular pain in his 
own groin — nothing, and yet . . . ! Insur- 
ance premium! And above all, the office! Who 
knew, who could tell, what might happen? There 
was no margin of safety, not fifty pounds margin 
of safety. He walked in success and happiness on 
a thin brittle crust! Crack! And where would 
they all be? Where would be the illusion of his 
son and daughter that he was an impregnable and 
unshakable rock? What would his son think if 
he knew that his father often calculated to half-a- 
crown, and economised in cigarettes and a great 
deal in lunches? . . . 

He asks, "Why did I bring all this on myself? 



122 PARIS NIGHTS 

Where do I come in, after all?" . . . The 
dawn, very early; and he goes to sleep once more! 

e?* e?* «5* t?* 

The next morning, factitiously bright after his 
bath, he is eating his breakfast, reading his news- 
paper, and looking at his watch. The night is 
over; the complicated organism is in full work 
again, with its air of absolute security. His news- 
paper, inspired by a millionaire to gain a million- 
aire's ends by appealing to the ingenuousness of 
this clever struggler, is uneasy with accounts of 
attacks meditated on the established order. His 
mind is made up. The established order may not 
be perfect, but he is in favour of it. He has ar- 
rived at an equilibrium, unstable possibly, but an 
equilibrium. One push, and he would be over! 
Therefore, no push ! He hardens his heart against 
the complaint of the unjustly treated. He has his 
own folk to think about. 

The station is now drawing him like a magnet. 
He sees in his mind's eye every yard of the way 
between the side-street and the office, and in imag- 
ination he can hear the clock striking at the other 
end. He must go; he must go! Several persons 
help him to go, and at the garden-gate he stoops 
and kisses that mysterious daughter. He strides 
down the side-street. Only a moment ago, it seems, 
he was striding up it! He turns into the long road. 
It is a grinding walk in the already hot sun. He 
reaches the station and descends into it, and is di- 
minished from an eternal father to a mere unit of 



ONE OF THE CROWD 123 

a throng. But on the platform he meets a jolly 
acquaintance. His face relaxes as they salute. "I 
say," he says after an instant, bursting with a good 
thing, "Have you heard the tale about the — ?" 



ITALY— 1910 



NIGHT AND MORNING IN FLORENCE 

Amid the infantile fluttering confusion caused bj T 
the arrival of the Milan express at Florence rail- 
way station, the thoughts of the artist as he falls 
sheer out of the compartment upon the soft bodies 
of hold-alls and struggling women, are not solely 
on the platform. This moment has grandeur. 
This city was the home of the supreme ones — 
Dante, Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Brunel- 
leschi. You have entered it. . . . Awe? I 
have never been aware of sentiments of awe towards 
any artists, save Charles Baudelaire. My secret 
attitude to them has always been that I would like 
to shake their hands and tell them briefly in their 
private slang, whatever their private slang was, 
that they had given immense pleasure to another 
artist. I have excepted Charles Baudelaire ever 
since I read his correspondence, in which he is eter- 
nally trying to borrow ten francs from some one, 
and if they cannot make it ten — then five. There 
is something so excessively poignant, and to me so 
humiliating, in the spectacle of the grand author 
of La Charogne going about among his acquaint- 
ance in search of a dollar, that I would only think 
about it when I wished to inflict on myself a pen- 
ance. It is a spectacle unique. Like the King 

127 



128 PARIS NIGHTS 

of Thule song in Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, it 
resembles nothing else of its kind. If the artist 
does not stand in awe before that monumental en- 
igma of human pride which called itself Charles 
Baudelaire, how shall the artist's posture be de- 
scribed? 

No, I will tell you what occupied the withdrawn 
and undefiled spaces of my mind as I entered Flor- 
ence, drifting on the stream of labelled menials and 
determined ladies with their teeth hard-set: Was 
it more interesting for an artist to be born into a 
great age of art, where he was beloved and appre- 
ciated, if not wholly comprehended, by relatively 
large masses of people; where his senses were on 
every hand indulged and pampered by the caress 
of the obviously beautiful; where he lived among 
equals, and saw himself continually surrounded by 
innumerable acts creative of beauty; and where he 
could feel in the very air a divine palpitation — or, 
on the other hand, was it more spiritually voluptu- 
ous for the artist to be born into a stone age, an age 
deaf and dumb, an age insensible to the sublime, 
ignorantly rejecting beauty, and occupying itself 
with the most damnable and offensive futilities that 
the soul of an artist can conceive? For I was go- 
ing, in my fancy, out of the one age into the other. 
And I decided, upon reflection, that I would just 
as soon be in the age in which I in fact was ; I said 
that I would not change places even with the most 
fortunate and miraculous of men — Leonardo da 
Vinci. There is an agreeable bitterness, an ex- 
quisite tang, in the thought of the loneliness of ar- 



FLORENCE 129 

tists in an age whose greatness and whose epic 
quality are quite divorced from art. And when I 
think of the artist in this age, I think of the Invisi- 
ble Man of H. G. Wells, in the first pride of his in- 
visibility (when he was not yet hunted), walking 
unseen and unseeing amid multitudes, and it is 
long before 1 anybody in the multitudes even notices 
the phenomenon of mysterious footmarks that can- 
not be accounted for! I like to be that man. I 
like to think that my fellows are few, and that even 
I, not having eyes to see most of them, must now 
and then be disconcerted by the appearance of un- 
accountable footmarks. There is something be- 
yond happiness, and that is, to know intensely and 
painfully that you are what you are. The great 
Florentines of course had that knowledge, but their 
circumstances were not so favourable as mine to its 
cultivation in an artist. Therein lay their disad- 
vantage and lies my advantage. 

Besides, you do not suppose that I would wish to 
alter this age by a single iota of its ugliness and its 
preposterousness ! You do not suppose I do not 
love it! You do not suppose I do not wallow in 
the trough of it with delight! There is not one 
stockbroker, not one musical comedy star, not one 
philanthropic giver of free libraries, not one noble 
brewer, not one pander, not one titled musician, 
not one fashionable bishop, not one pro-consul, that 
I would wish away. Where should my pride bit- 
terly exercise itself if not in proving that my age, 
exactly as it exists now, contains nothing that is 
not the raw material of beauty? If I wished to do 



130 PARIS NIGHTS 

so, I would force some among you to see that even 
the hotel-tout within the portals of the city of 
Giotto is beautiful. 

«?• t5* »?• !?• 

At dinner I am waited upon by a young and 
beautiful girl who, having almost certainly never 
heard of Gabriele d'Annunzio, yet speaks his lan- 
guage and none other. But she wears the apron 
and the cap of the English parlour-maid, in plen- 
ary correctness, and, knowing exactly how I should 
be served in England, she humours me; and above 
us is a vaulted ceiling. Such is the terrible might 
of England. I am surrounded by ladies ; the room 
is crammed with ladies. By the perfection of 
their virtuosity in the nice conduct of forks alone 
is demonstrated their ladyship. (And I who, 
like a savage, cannot eat pudding without a spoon!) 
There is a middle-aged gentleman, whose eye- 
glasses are wandering down his fine nose, lost in a 
bosky dell of women at the other end of the room; 
and there is myself; and there is a boy, obviously in 
Hades. And there are some fifty dames. Their 
voices, high, and with the sublime unconscious ar- 
rogance of the English, fight quietly and steadily 
among each other up in the vaulting. "Of course, 
I used to play cricket with my brothers. But, 
will you believe me, I've never seen a football match 
in my life!" "No, we haven't seen the new rector 
yet, but they say he's frightfully nice." "Benozzo 
Gozzoli — ye-es." It is impossible not to believe, 
listening to these astounding conversations, that 
nature, tired of imitating Balzac any longer, has 



FLORENCE 131 

now taken to imitating the novels of Mrs. Hum- 
phry Ward. 

The drawing-room is an English drawing-room 
— yes, with the Queen and "the authoress of Eliza- 
beth and her German Garden 3 * and a Bechstein 
grand. There are forty-five chairs and easy chairs 
in it, and fifty ladies; the odd five ladies sit low 
upon hassocks or recline on each other in attitudes 
of intense affection. And at the other end is a 
male, neither the man with the pincenez nor the boy 
in Hades, but a third who has mysterious^ come 
out of nothing into existence. I have entered, and 
I am held, as by a spell, in the doorway, the electric 
light raining upon me, a San Sebastian for the fatal 
arrows of the fifty, who fix on me their ingenuous 
eyes — 

And dart delicious danger thence 

(to cull an incomparable phrase from one of the 
secular poems of Dr. Isaac Watts) . And now 
there are more ladies behind me, filling the doorway 
with hushed expectation. For in the appalling 
silence, a young sad-orbed creature is lifting a vio- 
lin delicately from its case on the Bechstein, at 
which waits a sister-spirit. "Do tell me," says an 
American voice, intrepidly breasting the silence, 
"what was that perfectly heavenly thing you 
played last night — was it Debussy? We thought 
it must be Debussy." And the violinist answers: 
"No; I expect you mean the Goltermann. It is 
pretty, isn't it?" And as she holds up the violin, 
interrogating its strings with an anxious and a 



132 PARIS NIGHTS 

critical ear, I observe that beneath the strings lies 
a layer of rosin-dust. Thirty years ago, in the 
fastnesses of the Five Towns, amateurs used to 
deem it necessary to keep their violins dirty in or- 
der to play with the soulfulness of a Norman Ne- 
ruda. I would have been ready to affirm that ob- 
servation of the cleanliness of the instruments of 
professionals had killed the superstition long since; 
but lo, I have tunnelled the Simplon to meet it 

again I 

I go. Somehow, I depart, beaten off as it were 
with great loss. I plunge out into dark Florence, 
walking under the wide projecting eaves of Flor- 
ence to avoid the rain. And in my mind I can still 
see the drawing-room, a great cube of light, with 
its crowded frocks whose folds merge one into the 
next, and the Bechstein, and the strains of Golter- 
mann, and the attentive polite faces, and that sole 
man in the corner like a fly on a pin. I have run 
away from it. But I know that I shall go back to 
it, and that my curiosity will drink it to the dregs. 
For that drawing-room is to the working artist in 
me the most impressive and the most interesting 
thing in Florence. And when I reflect that there 
are dozens and dozens of it in Florence, I say that 
this age is the most romantic age that ever was. 

£ «* <* ^ 

I know where I am going, for my first business 
in entering a town, whether Florence, Hull, or 
Constantine, is always to examine the communica- 
tive posters on its walls and to glance through its 
newspapers. There is a performance of Spon- 



FLORENCE 133 

tini's La Vestale at the Teatro Verdi. Nothing, 
hardly, could have kept me away from that per- 
formance, which in every word of its announce- 
ment seems to me overpoweringly romantic. The 
name of Verdi alone. ... I heard Verdi late 
in my life, and in Italy, long after I knew by rote 
all the themes in Tristan and Die Meister singer, 
after Pelleas et Melisande had ceased to be a nov- 
elty at the Paris Opera Comique, after even the 
British discovery of Richard Strauss, and I shall 
never forget the ravishing effect on me of the first 
act of La Traviata; no, nor the tedium of the other 
acts. I would go to any theatre named Verdi. 
Then Spontini! What is Spontini but a name? 
Was it possible that I was about to hear an actual 
opera by this antique mediocrity whose music Ber- 
lioz loved beyond its deserts? Had anybody ever 

heard an opera by Spontini? ., I'^^-jJ* 

The shabbiness of the facade and of the box- \ 
office, and of the suits of the disillusioned but genial • 
men within the box-office — men who knew the full 
meaning of existence' A seat in the parterre for 
two lire — say one and sevenpence halfpenny — it is 
making a gift of the spectacle! The men take 
my two lire with an indulgent gesture, exclaiming 
softly with their eyes and hands: "What are two 
lire more or less in the vast abyss of our deficit? 
Throw them down!" Then I observe that my 
ticket is marked posto distinto — prominent seat, 
distinguished seat. Useless to tell me that it means 
nothing! It means much to me: another example 
of Italian politeness, at once exquisite and futile. 



134 PARIS NIGHTS 

Would the earl in the gate at Covent Garden, even 
for thirty-two lire on a Melba night, offer me a dis- 
tinguished seat? . . . Long stone corridors, 
steps up, steps down, turnings, directive cries echo- 
ing amid arches; and then I am in the auditorium, 
vast. 

It is as big as Covent Garden, and nearly as big 
as La Scala. It has six galleries, about a hundred 
boxes, and four varieties of seats on the ground 
floor. My distinguished seat is without the first 
quality of a seat — yieldingness. It does not ac- 
quiesce. It is as hard as seasoned wood can be, 
though roomy and well situated. And in a corner, 
lying against the high rampart of a box for ten 
people, I see negligently piled a great pyramid of 
ancient red cushions, scores and scores of them. 
And a little old ragged attendant comes and whis- 
pers alluringly, delicately in my ear: "Cuscina." 
Two sous would hire it and a smile thrown in. But 
no, I won't have it. I am too English to have that 
cushion. . . . The immense theatre, faced all 
in white marble, with traces here and there in a 
box of crimson upholstery, is as dim as a church. 
There are hundreds of electric bulbs, but unlighted : 
the sole illumination comes from a row of perfectly 
mediaeval gas-burners along the first gallery. 
After all, economy must obtain somewhere. I 
count an orchestra of over seventy living players; 
the most numerous body in the place : somehow they 
must support life. Over the acreage of the par- 
terre are sprinkled a few dozens of audience. 
There is a serried ring of faces lining the fifth gal- 



FLORENCE 135 

lery, to which admittance is tenpence, and another 
lining the sixth gallery, to which admittance is six- 
pence. The rest is not even paper. 

Yet a spruce and elegant conductor rises and the 
overture begins, and the orchestra proves that its 
instruments are real; and I hear Spontini, and for 
a little while enjoy his faded embroideries. And 
the curtain goes up on "a public place in Rome," 
upon a scale as spacious as Rome itself. Every- 
thing is genuine. There are two leading sopranos, 
one of whom is young and attractive, and they both 
have powerful and trained voices, and sing like the 
very dickens. No amateurishness about them! 
They know their business; they are accomplished 
and experienced artists. No hesitations, no timid- 
ities, no askings for indulgence because really I 
have only paid two lire! Their fine voices fill the 
theatre with ease, and would easily fill Covent Gar- 
den to the back row of the half-crown gallery. The 
same with the tenor, the same with the bass. Spon- 
tini surges onward in an excellent concourse of 
multitudinous sound, and I wonder what it is all 
about. I have a book of the words, but owing to 
the unfortunate absence of Welsbach mantles I 
cannot read it. I know it must be all about a ves- 
tal who objected to being a vestal, on account of a 
military uniform, and I content myself with this 
grand central fact. Then the stage brightens, and 
choruses begin to march on; one after another; at 
least a dozen: soldiers, wrestlers, populace, danc- 
ers, children. Yes, the show is complete even to 
ragamuffins larking about in the public place in 



136 PARIS NIGHTS 

Rome. I count a hundred people on the stage. 
And all the properties are complete. It is a com- 
plete production and an expensive production — 
except probably in the detail of wages. For in 
Italy prime donne with a repertoire of a dozen or 
fifteen first-class roles seem to go about the streets 
dressed like shop-girls. I have seen it. All this 
is just as exciting to me as the Church of S. Croce, 
even as explained by John Ruskin with a school- 
master's cane in his lily-hand. 

Interval! I go to the refreshment foyer to see 
life. And now I can perceive that quite a crowd 
of people has been hidden somewhere in the nooks 
of the tremendous theatre. The large caffe is 
crammed. Of course, it is vaulted, like everything 
in Florence. The furniture of the caffe is 
strangely pathetic in its f orlornness : marble-topped 
mahogany tables, and mahogany chairs in faded 
and frayed crimson rep. Furniture that ought to 
have been dead and buried long ago! The marble 
is yellow with extreme age and use. These tables 
and chairs are a most extraordinary survival; in a 
kind of Italian Louis Philippe style, debased First 
Empire ; or it might be likened to earliest Victorian. 
Once they were new; once they were the latest 
thing. For fifty years perhaps the management 
has been meaning to refurnish the caffe as soon as 
it could afford. The name of the theatre has been 
changed, but not those chairs nor that marble. 
And conceivably the sole waiter, gliding swiftly to 
and fro with indestructible politeness, is their con- 
temporary. The customers are the equivalent of a 






■ j kd 




THE ORCHESTRA PROVES THAT ITS INSTRUMENTS ARE REAL (Page 135) 



FLORENCE 137 

music-hall audience in these isles. They smoke, 
drink, and expectorate with the casualness of men 
who are taking a rest after Little Tich. They do 
not go to the opera with prayer and fasting and the 
score. They just stroll into the opera. Nor does 
the conductor, nor do the players, have the air of 
high priests of art who have brought miracles to 
pass. And I know what those two sopranos are 
talking about upstairs. Here opera is in the bones 
of the rabble. It is a tradition: a tradition in a 
very bad way of decayed splendour, but alive 
yet. 

For the second act the auditorium is brighter, 
and fuller, though the total receipts would not pay 
for five minutes of Caruso alone. The place looks 
half full and is perhaps a third full. Behind me 
a whole series of first-tier boxes are occupied by a 
nice, cheerful, chattering shop-keeping class of per- 
sons, simple folk that I like. A few soldiers are 
near. Also there is a man next but one to me who 
cannot any longer deprive himself of a cigarette. 
He bows his head and furtively strikes a match, 
right in the middle of the theatre, and for every 
puff he bows his head, and then looks up with an 
innocent air, as though repudiating any connection 
with the wisp of smoke that is floating aloft. No- 
body minds. The curtain rises on the interior of 
the Temple, a beautiful and solid architectural 
scene, much superior to anything in the first act, 
whose effect was rich and complex without being 
harmonious. The vestal is attending to the fire. 
When the military uniform unostentatiously enters, 



138 PARIS NIGHTS 

I feel that during an impassioned dialogue she will 
go and let that fire out. And she does. Such is 
the second act. I did not see the third. I shall 
never see it. I convinced myself that two acts of 
Spontini were enough for me. It was astonishing 
that even in Florence Spontini had not been in- 
terred. But clearly, from the efficiency, assurance, 
and completeness of its production, La Vestale 
must have been in the Florentine repertoire per- 
haps ever since its composition, and a management 
selling seats at two lire finds it so much easier to 
keep an old opera in the repertoire than to kick it 
out and bring in a new one. I had savoured the 
theatre, and I went, satisfied; also much preoccu- 
pied with the financial enigma of the enterprise, 
where indeed the real poetry of this age resides. 
Whence came the money to pay the wages of at 
least a couple of hundred skilled persons, and the 

L lighting and the heating and the rent, and the ad- 
vertisement, and the thousand minor expenses of 
such an affair? 
When I reached the abode of the ladies it was 
all dark and silent. I rang, intimidated. And one 
of those young and beautiful girls (no, not so 
young and not so beautiful, but still — ) in her ex- 
otic English attire opened the door. And with her 
sleepy eyes she looked at me as if saying: "Once 
in a way this sort of thing is all very well, but 
please don't let it occur too often. I suffer." A 
shame! And I crept contrite up the stairs, and 
along passages between hidden rows of sleeping la- 



FLORENCE 139 

dies. And there was my Baedeker lying on the 
night-table, and not a word in it about Florentine 
opera and the romance thereof. 

i5% t5* (?• *?• 

Rain still! Florentine rain, the next morning, 
steady and implacable! They come down to 
breakfast, those fifty ladies; not in a cohort, but in 
ones and twos and threes, appearing and disappear- 
ing, so that there are never more than half a dozen 
hovering together over the white and almost naked 
tables. They glance momentarily at the high win- 
dows and glance away, crushing by a heroic effort 
of self-control, impossible to any but women of the 
north, the impulse to criticise the order of the uni- 
verse. Calm, angular, ungainly, long-suffering, 
and morose, Cimabue might have painted them; 
not Giotto. Their garb is austere, flannel above 
the zone and stuff below ; no ornament, no fluffiness, 
no enticement; but passably neat, save for the un- 
tidy, irregular buttoning of the bodice down the 
spine. And note that they are fully and finally 
dressed to be seen of men; all the chill rites have 
been performed; they have not leapt straight from 
the couch into a peignoir, after the manner of Latin 
women — those odalisques at heart! They are as- 
toundingly gentle with each other, cooing sympa- 
thetic inquiries, emitting kind altruistic hopes, 
leaning intimately towards each other, fondling 
each other, and even sweetly kissing. They know 
by experience that strict observance of a strict code 
is the price of peace. In that voluntary mutual 



140 PARIS NIGHTS 

captivity, so full of enforced, familiar contacts, the 
error of a moment might produce a thousand hours 
of purgatory. ... A fresh young girl comes 
swinging in, and with a gesture of which in a few 
years she will be incapable, caresses the chin of her 
desiccated mamma. And the contrast between the 
two figures, the thought of what lies behind the one 
and what lies before the other, inured so soon to 
this existence — is poignant. The girl perceptibly 
droops in that atmosphere ; flourish in it she cannot. 
And the smiles and the sweetness continue in pro- 
fusion. Nevertheless I feel that I am amid loose 
nitro-glycerine : one jar, and the whole affair 
might be blown to atoms, and the papers would 
be full of "mysterious fatal explosion in a pension 
at Florence." The danger-points are the jam- 
pots and the honey-pots and the marmalade-pots, 
of which each lady apparently has her own. And 
when one of them says to the maid (all in white at 
this hour, as is meet) : "This is not my jam — I had 
more," I quake at the conception of the superhu- 
man force which restrains the awful bitterness in 
her voice. A matter of an instant ; but in that in- 
stant, in that fraction of an instant, the tigress has 
snarled at the bars of the cage and been dragged 
back. It is marvellous. It is terrifying. 

We talk. We talk to prove our virtuosity in 
the nice conduct of the early meal. I learn that 
they have been here for months, and that they will 
be here for months. And that next year it may be 
Rome, or more possibly Florence again. Florence 
is inexhaustible, inexhaustible. 



FLORENCE 141 

I mention the opera. I assert that there is such 
a thing as an opera. 

"Really!" Politeness masking indifference. 

I say that I went to the opera last night. 

"Really!" Politeness masking a puzzled, an 
even slightly alarmed surprise. 

I say that the opera was most diverting. 

"Really!" Politeness masking boredom. 

The opera is not appraised in the guide-books. 
The opera is no part of the official museum. Flor- 
ence is a museum, and nothing but a museum. 
Beyond the museum they do not admit that any- 
thing exists ; hence nothing exists beyond it. They 
do not scorn the rest of Florence. The rest of 
Florence simply has not occurred to them. Pride 
of the Medicis, bow before this pride, sublime in its 
absolute unconsciousness ! 

<?* *?* *?» *5* 

That morning I made my way in the rain to the 
Strozzi Palace, which palace is for me the great 
characteristic building of Florence. When I think 
of Florence, I do not expire in ecstasy on the sylla- 
bles of Duomo, Baptistery, or Palazzo Vecchio, 
or even Bargello. The Strozzi Palace is in my 
mind. Possibly I merely prefer it to the Riccardi 
Palace because I cannot by paying fivepence in- 
vade it and add it up. The Strozzi Palace still 
holds out against the northern hordes. Filippo 
Strozzi, as to whom my ignorance is immaculate, 
must have united in a remarkable degree the qual- 
ities of savagery, austere arrogance, and fine taste; 
otherwise he would never have approved Maiano's 



142 PARIS NIGHTS 

plans for this residence and castle. The dimensions 
of it remind you of the Comedie Humaine, and 
it carries rectangularity and uncompromising 
sharpness of corners to the last limit. In form it 
is simply a colossal cube, of which you can only 
appreciate the height by standing immediately be- 
neath the unfinished roof-cornice, the latter so vast 
in its beautiful enlargement of a Roman model that 
nobody during five hundred years has had the 
pluck to set about and finish it. Then you can 
see that in size the Strozzi ranks with cathedrals, 
and that the residential part of it, up in the air, 
only begins where three-story houses end. 

To appreciate its beauty and its moral you must 
get away from it, opposite one of its corners, so as 
to have two facades in perspective. The small 
arched windows of the first and second storeys are 
all that it shows of a curve. Rather finicking these 
windows, the elegant trifling of a spirit essentially 
grim; some are bricked up, some show a gleam of 
white-painted interior woodwork, and others have 
the old iron-studded shutters. The lower windows 
are monstrously netted in iron to resist the human 
storm. The upper windows may each be ten feet 
high, but they are mere details of the fagades, and 
the lower windows might be square port-holes. 
See the two perspectives sloping away from you 
under the tremendous eaves, a state-entrance in 
the middle of each! See the three rows of torch 
or banner holders and the marvellous iron lanterns 
at the corners! Imagine the place lit up with 
flame on some night of the early sixteenth cen- 



FLORENCE 143 

tury, human beings swarming about its base as 
at the foot of precipices. Imagine the lights out, 
and the dawn, and the day-gloom of those ill- 
lighted and splendid apartments. Imagine the 
traditional enemies of the Medicis trying to keep 
themselves warm therein during a windy Floren- 
tine winter! Imagine, from the Strozzi Palace, 
the ferocious altercations, and the artistic connois- 
seurship, and the continuous ruthless sweating of 
the common people, which made up the lives of 
the masters of Florence — and you will formulate 
a better idea of what life was than from any 
church! This palace is a supreme monument of 
grim force tempered by an exquisite sense of 
beauty. With the exception of an intervening 
cornice which has had a piece knocked out of it, 
and the damaged plinth, it stands now as it did 
at the commencement. Time has not accepted the 
challenge of its sharp corners. It might have been 
constructed ten years ago by Foster and Dicksee. 
I go up to one of the state entrances and peep 
in, shamefacedly. For it is a private house. At 
the far end of the archway is a magnificent iron 
grille, and I can see a delicately arched courtyard, 
utterly different in style from the exterior, fruit 
of another brain; and beyond the courtyard, a 
glimpse of a fresco and the vista of the state en- 
trance in the opposite fapade. At each corner of 
the courtyard the rain is splashing down, evidently 
from high open spouts, splashing with a loud, care- 
less, insolent noise, and the middle of the courtyard 
is a pool continuously pricked by thousands of rain- 



144 PARIS NIGHTS 

drops. The glass of the large lamp swinging in 
the draught of the archway is broken. A huge 
lackey in uniform strolls in front of the grille and 
lolls there. I move instinctively away, for if any- 
body recoils before a lackey it is your socialist. 

Then I see a lady hurrying across the square en- 
veloped in a great cloak and sheltered beneath an 
umbrella. She makes straight for the state en- 
trance, and passes me, dripping up the archway. I 
say to myself: 

"She belongs to the house. Now I am going to 
see the gates yield. The lackey was expecting 
her." And I had quite a thrill at sight of this liv- 
ing inhabitant of the Strozzi Palace. 

But no! She went right up to the grille, as 
though the lackey was in prison and she visiting 
him, and stopped there and stared silently into the 
courtyard. The lackey, dumbfounded and craven, 
moved off. She had only come to look. This was 
her manner of coming to look. I ought to have 
divined by the solidity of her heels that she was 
one of ours; not one of my particular band at 
breakfast, but in Florence there are dozens upon 
dozens of such breakfasts every morning, and from 
some Anglican breakfast she had risen. 

i?w JS (5* t5* 

Our breakfast took place in a palace. Not the 
Strozzi, not nearly so large nor so fine as the 
Strozzi, but a real Florentine palazzo. It has been 
transformed within to suit the needs and the ca- 
prices of those stern ladies. They have come, and 



FLORENCE 145 

they have come again, and they have calmly in- 
sisted, and they have had their will. Hygienic ap- 
pliances authentically signed by the great English 
artists in this genre! Radiators in each room! 
Electric bulbs over the bed and in the ceiling! Iron 
beds! The inconvenient height of the windows 
from the floor lessened by a little wooden platform 
on which are a little chair and a little table and a 
little piece of needlework and a little vase of 
flowers! . . . Steadily they are occupying the 
palaces, each lady in her nook, and the slow force 
of their will moulds even the granite to the de- 
sired uses. 

Why do they come? It cannot be out of pas- 
sion for the great art of the world. Nobody who 
had a glimmering of the real sense of beauty could 
dress as they dress, move as they move, buy what 
they buy, or talk as they talk. They mingle in 
their heads Goltermann with Debussy, and Botti- 
celli with Maude Goodman. Their drawing-room 
is full of Maude Goodman in her rich first period. 
. . . It cannot be out of a love of history, for 
they never unseal their lips in a spot where history 
has been made without demonstrating in the most 
painful manner an entire lack of historical imag- 
ination. They nibble daintily at crumbs of art 
and of archaeology in special booklets which some 
of themselves have written and others of them- 
selves have illustrated, and which make the coarse 
male turn with an almost animal satisfaction to 
Carl Baedeker or even the Reverend Herbert H. 



146 PARIS NIGHTS 

Jeaffreson, M. A. It is impossible that these ex- 
cellent creatures, whose only real defect has to do 
with the hooks and eyes down their spines, can ever 
comprehend the beauty and the significance of 
that by which they are surrounded. They have 
not the temperament. Temperamentally, they 
would be much more at home in Riga. Also it is 
impossible to believe that they are happy in Flor- 
ence. They do not wear the look of joy. Their 
gestures are not those of happiness. Nevertheless 
they can only be in Florence because they have 
discovered that they are less unhappy here than 
at home. What deep malady of society is it that 
drives them out of their natural frame — the frame 
in which they are comely and even delectable, the 
frame which best sets off their finer qualities — into 
unnatural exile and the poor despised companion- 
ship of their own sex? 

And what must be the force of that malady 
which drives them! The long levers that ulti- 
mately exert their power on the palaces of Flor- 
ence are worked from England. Behind each of 
these solitary ladies, in the English background, 
there must be a mysterious male — relative, friend, 
lawyer, stockbroker — advising, controlling, for- 
warding cheques and cheques and cheques, always. 
These ladies, economically, are dolls of a finan- 
cial system. Or you may call them the waste 
products of an arthritic civilisation. What a force 
is behind them, that they should possess themselves 
of another age and genius, and live in it as con- 
querors, modifying manners, architecture, and even 



If 






. \ ' 






y - 

■ 



A? 




J. 



__»S.^^»f 









a ' / /«« U 



i i 








WHY DO THEY COME? (Pope //,5) 



FLORENCE 147 

perhaps language! The cloaked lady in front of 
the grille shall, if you choose, fairly be likened to 
a barbarian on the threshold of a philosopher's dead 
court ; but as regards mere force, one may say that 
in her the Strozzis are up against an equal. 



II 

THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910 

It was an exquisitely beautiful Italian morning, 
promising heat that a mild and constant breeze 
would temper. The East was one glitter. Harm- 
less clouds were loitering across the pale sky, and 
across the Piazza children were taking the longest 
way to early school, as I passed from the clear sun- 
shine into the soft transparent gloom of one of the 
great pantheons of Italy — a vast thirteenth-century 
Franciscan church, the largest church ever built by 
any mendicant Order — carved and decorated and 
painted by Donatello, Giotto, Andrea della Robbia, 
Rossellino, Maiano, Taddeo Gaddi, Verrocchio, the 
incomparable Mino da Fiesole, Vasari, Canova. 

Already the whole place had been cleansed and 
swept, but at one of the remotest altars a char- 
woman was dusting. Little by little I descried other 
visitors in the distance, moving quietly under the in- 
timidation of that calm, afraid to be the first to 
break the morning stillness. There was the red 
gleam of a Baedeker. At a nearer altar a widow 
in black was kneeling in one of those attitudes of 
impassioned surrender and appeal that strike you 
so curiously, when for instance, you go out of Har- 
rods' Stores suddenly into the Brompton Oratory. 
From an unseen chapel came the sound of chanting, 

148 



THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910 149 

perfunctory, a part of the silence ; and last of all, at 
still another altar, I made out a richly coloured 
priest genuflecting, all alone, save for a black aco- 
lyte. In a corner two guides were talking busi- 
ness, and by the doors the beggars were talking 
business in ordinary tones before the official whin- 
ing of the day should commence. The immense in- 
terior had spaciousness for innumerable separate 
and diverse activities, each undisturbed by the 
others. And all around me were the tombs and 
cenotaphs of great or notorious men, who had made 
the glory and the destiny of Italy; Dante, Galileo, 
Michael Angelo, Donatello, Machiavelli; and 
Alfieri, Rossini, Aretino, Cherubini, Alberti; and 
even St. Louis, and a famous fourteenth century 
English Bishop, and a couple of Bonapartes; many 
ages, races, climes. 

t?* «5» £• i?* 

I sat down and opened the damp newspaper 
which I had just bought outside at the foot of the 
steps leading up to the dazzling marble facade. 
And when I had been staring at the newspaper 
some time I became aware that the widow at the al- 
tar in the middle distance had risen and was leav- 
ing the church, and then I saw to my surprise that 
she was an Irish lady staying in my hotel. She 
passed near me. Should I stop her, or should I 
not? I wanted to stop her, from the naive pride 
which one feels in being able to communicate a star- 
tling piece of news of the first magnitude. But on 
the other hand, I really was nervous about telling 
her. To tell her seemed brutal, seemed like knock- 



150 PARIS NIGHTS 

ing her down. This was my feeling. She decided 
the question for me by deviating from her path to 
greet me. 

"What a lovely morning!" she said. 

"Have you heard about the King?" I asked her 
gruffly, well knowing that she had not. 

"No," she answered smiling. And then, as she 
looked at me, her smile faded. 

"Well," I said, "he's dead!" 

"What! Our King?" 

"Yes. He died at midnight. Here it is." And 
I showed her the "Recentissime" or Latest News 
page of the newspaper, two lines in leaded type: 
"Londra, 7, ore 2:30 (Urgenza). Re Edoardo e 
inorto a inezzanotte." She knew enough Italian to 
comprehend that. 

"This last midnight?" She was breathless. 

"Yes." 

"But — but — no one even knew anything about 
him being ill?" she protested. 

"Yesterday evening's Italian papers had columns 
about the illness — it was bronchitis," I said grimly. 

"Oh!" she said, "I never see the Italian papers." 

Yet the name of Edward the Seventh had been on 
every newspaper placard in the land on Friday 
night. But in Italy these British have literally 
no sight for anything later than the sixteenth cen- 
tury. 

Tears stood in her eyes. On my part it would 
have been just as kindly to knock her down. 

"Just think of that little fellow at Osborne — 
he's got to be Prince of Wales now, and I suppose 







^aBSBg 1 v-, J i<' 4 . -^«~\' 






{>> 



■ '- 




LESS UNHAPPY HERE THAN AT HOME (Page 146) 



THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910 151 

they'll take him away from there," she murmured 
brokenly, as she went off, aghast. 

«3* t>* ij* J* 

I sat down again. It seemed to me, as I re- 
flected among these tombs and cenotaphs, that a 
woman's eyes, on such an occasion, were a good test 
of the genuineness of popular affection. 

I then noticed that, while the Irish lady and I had 
been whispering, another acquaintance of mine had 
mysteriously entered the church without my cog- 
nizance and had set up his tent in the south tran- 
sept. This was a young man who, having gained 
a prominent place in a certain competition at the 
Royal College of Art, had been sent off with money 
in his pocket, at the expense of the British nation, 
to study art and to paint in Italy. He possessed 
what is called a travelling scholarship, and the treas- 
ures of Italy were at his feet as at the feet of a 
conqueror. Already he had visited me at my hotel, 
and filled my room with the odour of his fresh oil- 
sketches. There were only two things in his head 
— the art of painting, and the prospect of an im- 
mediate visit to Venice. He had lodged his easel 
on a memorial-stone among the flags of the pave- 
ment, and was painting a vista of tombs ending in 
a bright light of stained glass. His habit was to 
paint before the museums opened and after they 
closed. I went and accosted him. Again I was 
conscious of the naive pride of a bringer of tragic 
tidings. He was young and strong, with fire in 
his eye. I need not be afraid of knocking him 
down, at anv rate. 



152 PARIS NIGHTS 

"The King's dead," I said. 

He lifted his brush. 

"Not—?" 

I nodded. 

He burst out with a tremendous, "By Jove!" 
that broke that fresh morning stillness once 
for all, and faintly echoed into silence among those 
tombs. "By Jove!" 

His imagination had at once risen to the solemn 
grandeur of the event, as an event; but the sharp 
significance of death did not penetrate the armour 
of that enthusiastic youthfulness. "What a pity!" 
he exclaimed nicely ; but he could not get the irides- 
cent vision of Venice out of his head, nor the prob- 
lems of his canvas. He continued painting — what 
else could he do? — and then, after a few moments, 
he said eagerly, "I wish I was in London!" 

"Me too!" I said. 

Probably most of the thousands of Englishmen 
in Italy had the same wish. 

s5* <5* «?* <?* 

I departed from the church. The chanting had 
ceased; the guides were still talking business, but 
the beggars had begun to whine. 

In the dining-room of the hotel there was abso- 
lute silence. A lady near the door, with an Italian 
newspaper over her coffee-cup, who had never 
spoken to me before, and would probably never 
speak to me again, said : 

"I suppose you've heard about — " 

"Yes," I said. 

Everybody in the room knew. Everybody was 



THE SEVENTH OF MAY, 1910 153 

English. And nobody spoke. As the guests came 
down by ones and twos to breakfast, the lady near 
the door stopped each of them: "I suppose you've 
heard—" But none of them had. I was her sole 
failure. At length a retired military officer came 
down, already informed. "Where does this news 
come from?" he demanded of the room, impatiently, 
cautiously, half-incredulously, as one who would 
hesitate to trust any information that he had not 
seen in a London daily. With a single inflection of 
his commanding voice he wiped out the whole Press 
of Italy— that country of excellent newspapers. 
He got little answer. We all sat silent. 



Ill 

MORE ITALIAN OPERA 

Geographical considerations made it impossible 
for me to be present at the performance of La 
Traviata, which opened the Covent Garden sea- 
son. I solaced myself by going to hear, on that 
very night, another and better opera of Verdi's, 
Aida, in a theatre certainly more capacious than 
Covent Garden, namely, the Politeamo Fiorentino, 
at Florence. Florence is a city of huge theatres, 
which seem to be generally empty, even during 
performances, and often on sale. In the majority 
of them the weather is little by little getting the bet- 
ter of the ceiling; and the multifarious attendants, 
young and old, go about their casual vague business 
of letting cushions or selling cigars in raiment that 
has the rich, storied interest of antiquity. But on 
this particular occasion prosperity attended a Flor- 
entine theatrical enterprise. I was one of three 
thousand or so excited and crowded beings, most of 
whom had paid a fair price for admission to hear the 
brassiest opera ever composed. 

Once I used to condescend to Verdi. That was 
in the early nineties, when, at an impressionable 
and violent age, I got caught in the first genuine 
Wagner craze that attacked this country. We 
used to go to the special German seasons at Drury 
Lane, as it were to High Mass. And although 

154 



MORE ITALIAN OPERA 155 

Max Alvary and Frau Klafsky would be singing 
in Tristan, you might comfortably have put all 
the occupants of the upper circle into a Pullman 
car. Once a cat walked across the stage during a 
solemn moment in the career of Isolde, and nearly 
everybody laughed ; a few tittered, which was even 
more odious. Only a handful, of such as myself, 
scowled angrily— not at the cat, which was really 
rather fine in the garden, completing it— but at 
the infantile unseriousness of these sniggering so- 
called Wagnerians. I felt that laughter would 
have been very well at a Verdi performance, might 
even have enhanced it. Meanwhile, over the way 
at Convent Garden, Verdi performances were being 
given to the usual full houses. It never occurred 
to me to attend them. Verdi was vulgar. I can- 
not explain my conviction that Verdi was vulgar, 
because I had not heard a single opera of Verdi's, 
save his Wagnerian imitations. No doubt it arose 
out of the deep human instinct to intensify the 
pleasure of admiring one thing by simultaneously 
disparaging another thing. 

£ £ & £ 

Then, a long time afterwards, in the compara- 
tively calm interval between the first and the second 
Wagner crazes, I heard the real Verdi. It was 
La Traviata, in a little town in Italy, and it was 
the first operatic performance I had attended in 
Italy. I adored it, when I was not privately 
laughing at it; and there are one or two airs in it, 
which I would sit through the whole opera to hear, 
if I could not hear them otherwise. (Happily 



156 PARIS NIGHTS 

they occur in the first act.) Yes, Verdi's name 
does not begin with W; but it very nearly does. I 
stuck him up at once a little lower than the angels, 
and I have never pulled him down. It is certain, 
however, that La Traviata at any rate cannot 
live, unless as a comic opera. I personally did not 
laugh aloud, because the English are seldom cruel in 
a theatre; but the tragical parts are undoubtedly 
very funny indeed, funnier even than the tragical 
parts of the exquisitely absurd play, La Dame aux 
Camelias, upon which the opera is founded. 
When La Traviata was first produced, about 
fifty-five years ago, in Venice, its unconscious hu- 
mour brought about an absolute, a disastrous fail- 
ure. The performance ended amid roars of laugh- 
ter. Unhappily the enormous proportions of Sig- 
nora Donatelli, who sang Violetta, aided the fiasco. 
When the doctor announced that this lady was in 
an advanced stage of consumption and had but a 
few hours to live, Harry Lauder himself could not 
have had a greater success of hilarity with the mob. 
Italians are like that. They may be devoted to 
music — though there are reasons for doubting it — 
but as opera-goers and concert-goers they are a 
godless crew. An Englishman would have laughed 
at Violetta's unconsumptive waist, but he would 
have laughed in the street, or the next morning. 
The English have reverence, and when they go to 
the opera, they go to hear the opera. 

«?• €?■ «?* €?■ 

When Italians go to the opera, they are appar- 
ently out for a lark, and they have some of the 



MORE ITALIAN OPERA 157 

qualities of the Roman multitude enjoying wild 
beasts in the amphitheatre. I think I have never 
been to an operatic performance in Italy without 
acutely noticing this. When I went to hear 
Aida, the colossal interior of the Politeamo 
Fiorentino had the very look of an amphitheatre, 
with its row of heads and hats stretching away 
smaller and smaller into a haze. There were no- 
tices about appealing to the gentleness of the 
public not to smoke. But do you suppose the pub- 
he did not smoke? Especially considering that the 
management thoughtfully offered cigars, ciga- 
rettes, and matches for sale ! In a very large assem- 
blage of tightly-packed people, unauthorised 
noises are bound to occur from time to time. Now, 
an Italian audience will never leave an unauthor- 
ised noise alone. If a chair creaks, or a glass on 
the bar tinkles, an Italian audience will hiss sav- 
agely and loudly for several seconds — which seem 
like several minutes. Not in the hope of stopping 
the noise, for the noise has stopped! Not because 
it wishes not to miss a note of the music, for it 
misses about twenty-five per cent, of the notes 
through its own fugal hissing! But from simple, 
truculent savagery! It cares naught for the sus- 
ceptibilities of the artists. Whether a singer is in 
the midst of a tender pianissimo, or the band is 
blaring its best, if an Italian audience hears a noise, 
however innocent, it will multiply that noise by a 
hundred. Yet the individual politeness of the 
Italian people is perfectly delightful. 

Further: In the middle of the performance a 



158 PARIS NIGHTS 

shabby gentleman came on to the stage and begged 
indulgence for an artist who was "gravely indis- 
posed." The audience received him with cynical 
laughter; he made a gesture of cynical resignation 
and departed. The artist received no indulgence. 
The artist was silly enough to hold on powerfully 
to a high note at the end of a long solo; and that 
solo had to be given again — and let there be no 
mistake about it! — despite the protests of a minor- 
ity against such insistence. The Latin tempera- 
ment! If you sing in opera in Italy, your career 
may be unremunerative, but it will be exciting. 
You may be deified, or you may be half -killed. 
But be assured that the audience is sincere, as sin- 
cere as a tiger. 

«5* t?* t?* *?* 

Composers also must beware. When Pasini's 
new opera, Don Quixote, was produced lately, it 
had a glorious run of two performances. It was, 
indeed, received with execration. After the second 
night the leading newspaper appeared with a few 
brief, barbed remarks: "The season of the Teatro 
Verdi is ended. It would have been better if it had 
never started. . . . The maestro Pasini has 
written an opera which may be very pleasing — to 
deaf mutes." Yet Don Quivote was not worse 
than many other operas which people pay to see. 
Imagine these manners in unmusical England. 

France is less crude, but not always very much 
less crude. The most musical city in France is 
Toulouse. An extraordinary number of singers, 
composers, and poets seem to be born in Toulouse. 



MORE ITALIAN OPERA 159 

But the debuts of an operatic artist at the Toulouse 
municipal opera are among the most dangerous and 
terrible experiences that can fall to a singer. The 
audience is merciless, and recks not of youth nor 
sex. If it is not satisfied, it expresses its opinion 
frankly, and for the more frank and effective ex- 
pression of its opinion it goes to the performance 
suitably provided with decayed vegetables. 
And I am told that Marseilles candour is carried 
even further. As for Naples — . 

Perhaps, after all, our admirable politeness and 
the solemnity of our attitude towards the whole 
subject of opera merely prove that Continental na- 
tions are right in regarding us as fundamentally 
unmusical. With us opera is a cultivated exotic. 
In Italy, what does it matter if you ruin a com- 
poser's career, or even kill a young soprano who has 
not reached your standard! There are quantities 
of composers and sopranos all over Italy. You 
can see them active in the very streets. You can't 

keep them down. We say Miss , the English 

soprano, in startled accents of pride. Italians don't 

say Signorina -, the Italian soprano. In Italy 

you get a new opera about once a month. The last 
English grand opera that held the English stage 
was Artaxerxes, and it is so long ago that not one 
person in a hundred who reads these lines will be 
able to give the name of the composer. Can any 
nation be musical which does not listen chiefly to 
its own music? 



THE RIVIERA— 1907 



THE HOTEL TRISTE 

Because I am a light and uneasy sleeper I can 
hear, at a quarter to six every morning, the distant 
subterranean sound of a peculiarly energetic bell. 
It rings for about one minute, and it is a signal at 
which They quit their drowsy beds. And all along 
the Riviera coast, from Toulon to San Remo, in 
the misty and chill dawn, They are doing the same 
thing, beginning the great daily conspiracy to per- 
suade me, and those like me, that we are really the 
Sultan, and that our previous life has been a dream. 
I sink back into slumber and hear the monotonous 
roar of the tideless Mediterranean in my sleep. 
The Mediterranean, too, is in the conspiracy. It is 
extremely inconvenient and annoying to have to go 
running about after a sea which wanders across half 
a mile of beach twice a day; appreciating this, and 
knowing the violent objection of sultans to any sort 
of trouble, the Mediterranean dispenses with a tide ; 
at any hour it may be found tirelessly washing 
the same stone. After an interval of time, during 
which a quarter to six in the morning has receded 
to the middle of the night, I wake up wide, and in- 
stantly, in Whitman's phrase, 

/ know I am august. 

I put my hand through the mosquito curtains and 
touch an electrical contrivance placed there for my 

163 



164 PARIS NIGHTS 

benefit, and immediately there appears before me a 
woman neatly clothed to delight my eye, and I gaze 
out at her through my mosquito curtains. She 
wishes me "Good morning" in my own language, 
in order to save the trouble of unnecessary compre- 
hension, and if I had happened to be Italian, 
French, or German she could still greet me in my 
own language, because she has been taught to do 
so in order to save me trouble. She takes my com- 
mands for the morning, and then I notice that the 
sun has thoughtfully got round to my window and 
is casting a respectful beam or two on my hyacin- 
thine locks. In the vast palace the sultans are aris- 
ing, and I catch the rumour thereof. Presently, 
with various and intricate aid, I have laved the im- 
perial limbs and assumed the robes of state. The 
window is opened for me, and I pass out on to the 
balcony and languidly applaud the Mediterranean, 
like a king diverting himself for half an hour at 
the opera. It is a great sight, me applauding the 
Mediterranean as I drink a cup of tea; stockbrok- 
ers clapping the dinner-band at the Trocadero 
would be nothing to it. After this I do an un- 
monarchical act, an act of which I ought to be 
ashamed, and which I keep a profound secret from 
the other sultans in the vast palace — I earn my 
living by sheer hard labour. 

Then I descend to the banqueting-hall, and no 
sooner do I appear than I am surrounded by min- 
ions in black, an extraordinary race of persons. 
At different hours I see these mysterious minions 
in black, and sometimes I observe them surrepti- 



THE HOTEL TRISTE 165 

tiously. They have no names. They never eat, 
never drink, never smile, never love, never do any- 
thing except offer me prepared meats with respect- 
ful complacency. Their god is my stomach, and 
they have made up their minds that it must be ap- 
peased with frequent burnt sacrifices and libations. 
They watch my glance as mariners the sky, and the 
slightest hint sends them flying. At the conclu- 
sion of the ceremony they usher me out of the hall 
with obeisances into other halls and other deferen- 
tial silences. 

I?* «5* *•• J* 

And when the entire rite has been repeated twice 
we recline on sofas, I and the other sultans, and 
spend the final hours of the imperial day in being 
sad and silent together. We are sad because we 
are sultans. It is in the nature of things that sul- 
tans should be sad ; it is not the cares of state which 
make us sad, but merely a high imperial instinct 
for the correct. Silence is, of course, a necessity 
to sultans, and for this reason the activity of the im- 
mense palace is conducted solely in hushed tones. 
The minions in black never raise their dulcet voices 
more than half an inch or so. Late at night, as I 
pass on my solitary, sad way to the chamber of 
sleep, I see them, those mysterious minions with no 
names and no passions and no heed for food, still 
hovering expectant, still bowing, still silent. And 
lastly I retire. I find my couch beautifully laid 
out, I cautiously place myself upon it, I savour the 
soundless calm of the palace, and I sleep again; 
and my closing thought is the thought that I am 



166 PARIS NIGHTS 

august, and that all the other sultans, in this and all 
the other palaces from Toulon to San Remo, are 
august. 

t5* e5* «?• t?* 

Strange things happen. Once a week a very 
strange thing happens. I find an envelope lying 
about. It is never given to me openly. I may 
discover it propped up against the teapot on my 
tea-tray, or on my writing-desk, or sandwiched in 
my "post," between a love-letter and a picture post 
card. But I invariably do find it; measures are 
taken that I shall succeed promptly in finding it. 
All the minions pretend that this envelope is a 
matter of no importance whatever; I also pretend 
the same. Now, the fact is that I simply hate this 
envelope; I hate the sight of it; I hate to open it; 
I dread its contents. Every week it shocks me. I 
carry it about with me in my imperial pocket for 
several hours, fighting against the inevitable. 
Then at length I dismally yield to a compulsion. 
And I wander, by accident on purpose, in the direc- 
tion of a little glass-partitioned room, where a ma- 
levolent man sits like a spider sits in its web. We 
both pretend I am there by chance, but since I am 
'n fact there, I may as well — a pure formality! 
And a keen listener might hear a golden chink or 
the rustle of paper. And then I feel feeble but re- 
lieved, as if I had come out of the dentist's. And 
I am aware that I am not so excessively august 
after all, and that I am in the middle of the Riviera 
season, when one must expect, etc., etc., and that 
even the scenery was scientifically reduced to fig- 



\ 




A HUMAN BEING TALKING TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING (Page 167) 



THE HOTEL TRISTE 167 

ures in that envelope, and that anyhow the Hotel 
Triste is the Hotel Triste. (Triste is not its real 
name; one of my fellow sultans, who also does the 
shameful act in secret, so baptised it in a ribald mo- 
ment.) 

<5* t5* c?* (?■ 

The strangest thing of all occurred one night. 
I was walking moodily along the convenient marge 
of the Mediterranean when I saw a man, a human 
being, dressed in a check suit and a bowler hat, 
talking to another human being dressed in a blouse 
and a skirt. I passed them. The man was smil- 
ing, and chattering loudly and rapidly and even 
passionately to the soul within the blouse. Soon 
they parted, with proofs of affection, and the man 
strode away and overtook and left me behind. 
You could have knocked me down with a feather 
when I perceived he was one of the mysterious 
nameless minions who I thought always wore 
mourning and never ate, drank, smiled, or loved. 
"Fellow wanderer in the Infinite," I addressed his 
back as soon as I had recovered, "What are your 
opinions upon life and death and love, and the ad- 
visability of being august?" 



II 

war! 

We were in the billiard-room — English men and 
women collected from various parts of the earth, 
and enjoying that state of intimacy which is some- 
how produced by the comfortable click of billiard 
balls. It is extraordinary what pretty things the 
balls say of a night in the billiard-room of a good 
hotel. They say: "You are very good-natured and 
jolly people. Click. Women spoil the play, but 
it's nice to have them here. Click. And so well- 
dressed and smiling and feminine! Click. Click. 
Cigars are good and digestion is good. Click. 
How correct and refined and broad-minded you all 
are! All's right with the world. Click." A 
stockbroker sat near me by the fire. My previous 
experience of stockbrokers had led me to suppose 
that all stockbrokers were pursy, middle-aged, hard- 
breathers, thick-fingered, with a sure taste in wines, 
steaks, and musical comedies. But this one was 
very different — except perhaps on the point of 
musical comedies. He was quite young, quite thin, 
quite simple. In fact, he was what is known as an 
English gentleman. He frankly enjoyed showing 
young ladies aged twenty-three how to make a 
loser off the red, and talking about waltzes, travel, 
and sport. He never said anything original, and 

168 



WAR! 169 

so never surprised one nor made one feel uncom- 
fortable. He was extremely amiable, and we all 
liked him. The sole fact about the Stock Exchange 
which I gleamed from him was that the Stock Ex- 
change comprised many bounders, and "y° u had to 
be civil to 'em, too." 

*5* *?• i5* «5* 

"You've heard the news?" I said to him. 
"About Japan?" he asked. No, he had not heard. 
It took the English papers two days to reach us, 
and, of course, for the English there are no news- 
papers but English newspapers. There was a first- 
class local daily; with a complete service of foreign 
news, and a hundred thousand readers ; but I do not 
believe that one English person in ten even knew 
of its existence. So I took the local daily out of 
my pocket, and translated to him the Russian note 
informing the Powers that ambassadors were pack- 
ing up. "Looks rather bad!" he murmured. I 
could have jumped up and slain him on the 
spot with the jigger, for every English person in 
that hotel every night for three weeks past had ex- 
claimed on glancing at the "Times": "Looks bad!" 
And here this amiable young stockbroker, with war 
practically broken out, was saying it again! I am 
perfectly convinced that everyone said this, and this 
only, because no one had any ideas beyond it. 
There had appeared some masterly articles in the 
"Times" on the Manchurian question. But nobody 
read them: I am sure of that. No one had even a 
passable notion of Far Eastern geography, and no 
one could have explained, lucidly or otherwise, the 



170 PARIS NIGHTS 

origin of the gigantic altercation. How strange it 
is that the causes of war never excite interest! 
(What was the cause of the Franco- German war, 
you who are omniscient?) 

In response to another question, the young 
stockbroker said that his particular market would 
be seriously affected. "I should like to be there," 
[on the Exchange], he remarked, and added 
dreamily: "It would be rather fun." Then we be- 
gan a four-handed game, a game whose stupidities 
were atoned for by the charming gestures of 
women. And the stockbroker found himself in 
enormous form. The stone of the Russian Note 
had sunk into the placid lake and not a ripple was 
left. Nothing but billiards had existed since the 
beginning of the world, or ever would exist. Noth- 
ing, I reflected, will rouse the average sensible man 
to an imaginative conception of what a war is, not 
even the descriptions of a Stephen Crane. Nay, 
not even income tax at fifteen pence in the pound! 

t5* «?■ t?* <?• 

The next morning I went out for a solitary walk 
by the coast road. And I had not gone a mile be- 
fore I came to an unkempt building, with 
a few officials lounging in front of it. "French 
Custom House" was painted across its pale face. 
Then the road began to climb up among the outly- 
ing spurs of the Maritime Alps. It went higher 
and higher till it was cut out of the solid rock. 
Half a mile further, and there was another French 
Custom House. Still further, where the rock be- 
came crags, and the crags beetled above and beetled 



WAR! 171 

below, there occurred a profound gorge, and from 
the stone bridge which spanned it one could see, and 
faintly hear, a thin torrent rushing to the sea per- 
haps a couple of hundred feet below. Immediately 
to the west of this bridge the surface of the crags 
had been chiselled smooth, and on the expanse had 
been pictured a large black triangle with a white 
border — about twelve feet across. And under the 
triangle was a common little milestone arrange- 
ment, smaller than many English milestones, and 
on one side of the milestone was painted "France" 
and on the other "Italia." This was the division be- 
tween the two greatest Latin countries; across this 
imaginary line had been waged the bloodless but 
disastrous tariff war of ten years ago. I was in 
France; a step, and I was in Italy! And it is on 
account of similar imaginary, artificial, and uncon- 
vincing lines, one here, one there — they straggle 
over the whole earth's crust — that most wars, mili- 
tary, naval, and financial, take place. 

e?* t5* t?* »5* 

Across the gorge was a high, brown tenement, 
and towards the tenement strutted an Italian sol- 
dier in the full, impossible panoply of war. He 
carried two rifles, a mile or so of braid, gilt enough 
to gild the dome of St. Paul's and Heaven knows 
what contrivances besides. And he was smoking 
a cigarette out of a long holder. Two young girls, 
aged perhaps six or eight, bounded out of the slat- 
ternly tenement, and began to chatter to him in a 
high infantile treble. The formidable warrior 
smiled affectionately, and bending down, offered 



172 PARIS NIGHTS 

them a few paternal words; they were evidently 
spoiled little things. Close by a vendor of picture 
post cards had set up shop on a stone wall. Far be- 
low, the Mediterranean was stretched out like a 
blue cloth without a crease in it, and a brig in full 
sail was crawling across the offing. The sun shone 
brilliantly. Roses in perfect bloom had escaped 
from gardens and hung free over hedges. Every- 
thing was steeped in a tremendous and impressive 
calm — a calm at once pastoral and marine, and the 
calm of obdurate mountains that no plough would 
ever conquer. And breaking against this mighty 
calm was the high, thin chatter of the little girls, 
with their quick and beautiful movements of child- 
hood. 

And as I watched the ragged little girls, and fol- 
lowed the brig on the flat and peaceful sea, and 
sniffed the wonderful air, and was impregnated by 
the spirit of the incomparable coast and the morning 
hour, something overcame me, some new perception 
of the universality of humanity. ( It was the little 
girls that did it.) And I thought intensely how 
absurd, how artificial, how grotesque, how acci- 
dental, how inessential, was all that rigmarole of 
boundaries and limits and frontiers. It seemed to 
me incredible, then, that people could go to war 
about such matters. The peace, the natural univer- 
sal peace, seemed so profound and so inherent in 
the secret essence of things, that it could not be 
broken. And at the very moment, though I knew 
it not, while the brig was slipping by, and the little 



WAR! 173 

girls were imposing upon the good-nature of their 
terrible father, and the hawker was arranging his 
trumpery, pathetic post cards, they were killing 
each other — Russia and Japan were — in a row 
about "spheres of influence." 



Ill 



"monte' 



Monte Carlo — the initiated call it merely 
"Monte" — has often been described, in fiction and 
out of it, but the frank confession of a ruined gam- 
bler is a rare thing; partly because the ruined gam- 
bler can't often write well enough to express himself 
accurately, partly because he isn't in the mood for 
literary composition, and partly because he is some- 
times dead. So, since I am not dead, and since it 
is only by means of literary composition that I can 
hope to restore my shattered fortunes, I will give 
you the frank confession of a ruined gambler. Be- 
fore I went to Monte Carlo I had all the usual ideas 
of the average sensible man about gambling in gen- 
eral, and about Monte Carlo in particular. 
"Where does all the exterior brilliance of Monte 
Carlo come from?" I asked sagely. And I said 
further: "The Casino administration does not dis- 
guise the fact that it makes a profit of about 50,000 
francs a day. Where does that profit come from?" 
And I answered my own question with wonderful 
wisdom: "Out of the pockets of the foolish gam- 
blers." I specially despised the gambler who gam- 
bles "on a system"; I despised him as a creature of 
superstition. For the "system" gambler will argue 
that if I toss a penny up six times and it falls 

174 




GAMBLING AT MONTE CARLO (Page 174) 



"MONTE" 175 

"tail" every time, there is a strong probability that 
it will fall "head" the seventh time. "Now," I said, 
"can any rational creature be so foolish as to sup- 
pose that the six previous and done-with spins can 
possibly affect the seventh spin? What connec- 
tion is there between them?" And I replied: "No 
rational creature can be so foolish. And there is 
no connection." In this spirit, superior, omnis- 
cient, I went to Monte Carlo. 

Of course, I went to study human nature and find 
material. The sole advantage of being a novelist 
is that when you are discovered in a place where, as 
a serious person, you would prefer not to be discov- 
ered, you can always aver that you are studying 
human nature and seeking material. I was much 
impressed by the fact of my being in Monte Carlo. 
I said to myself: "I am actually in Monte Carlo!" 
I was proud. And when I got into the gorgeous 
gaming saloons, amid that throng at once glitter- 
ing and shabby, I said: "I am actually in the gam- 
ing saloons !" And the thought at the back of my 
mind was: "Henceforth I shall be able to say that 
I have been in the gaming saloons at Monte Carlo." 
After studying human nature at large, I began to 
study it at a roulette table. I had gambled before 
— notably with impassive Arab chiefs in that singu- 
lar oasis of the Sahara desert, Biskra — but only a 
little, and always at petits chevauoc. But I under- 
stood roulette, and I knew several "systems." I 
found the human nature very interesting; also the 
roulette. The sight of real gold, silver, and notes 
flung about in heaps warmed my imagination. At 



176 PARIS NIGHTS 

this point I felt a solitary five-franc piece in my 
pocket. And then the red turned up three times 
running, and I remembered a simple "system" that 
began after a sequence of three. 

«?• !?• *?* *5* 

I don't know how it was, but long before I had 
formally decided to gamble I knew by instinct that 
I should stake that five-franc piece. I fought 
against the idea, but I couldn't take my hand empty 
out of my pocket. Then at last (the whole experi- 
ence occupying perhaps ten seconds) I drew forth 
the five-franc piece and bashfully put it on black. 
I thought that all the fifty or sixty persons crowded 
round the table were staring at me and thinking to 
themselves: "There's a beginner!" However, 
black won, and the croupier pushed another five- 
franc piece alongside of mine, and I picked them 
both up very smartly, remembering all the tales I 
had ever heard of thieves leaning over you at Monte 
Carlo and snatching your ill-gotten gains. I then 
thought: "This is a bit of all right. Just for fun 
I'll continue the system." I did so. In an hour I 
had made fifty francs, without breaking into gold. 
Once a croupier made a slip and was raking in red 
stakes when red had won, and people hesitated (be- 
cause croupiers never make mistakes, you know, 
and you have to be careful how you quarrel with the 
table at Monte Carlo), and I was the first to give 
vent to a protest, and the croupier looked at me and 
smiled and apologised, and the winners looked at 
me gratefully, and I began to think myself the 
deuce and all of a Monte Carlo habitue. 



"MONTE" 177 

Having made fifty francs, I decided that I 
would prove my self-control by ceasing to play. 
So I did prove it, and went to have tea in the Ca- 
sino cafe. In those moments fifty francs seemed to 
me to be a really enormous sum. I was as happy as 
though I had shot a reviewer without being found 
out. I gradually began to perceive, too, that 
though no rational creature could suppose that a 
spin could be affected by previous spins, neverthe- 
less, it undoubtedly was so affected. I began to 
scorn a little the average sensible man who scorned 
the gambler. "There is more in roulette than is 
dreamt of in your philosophy, my conceited friend," 
I murmured. I was like a woman — I couldn't 
argue, but I knew infallibly. Then it suddenly 
occurred to me that if I had gambled with louis in- 
stead of five-franc pieces I should have made 200 
francs — 200 francs in rather over an hour! Oh, 
luxury! Oh, being-in-the-swim ! Oh, smartness! 
Oh, gilded and delicious sin! 

<Jf *•• *?• «3* 

Five days afterwards I went to Monte Carlo 
again, to lunch with some brother authors. In the 
meantime, though I had been chained to my desk 
by unalterable engagements, I had thought con- 
stantly upon the art and craft of gambling. One 
of these authors knew Monte Carlo, and all that 
therein is, as I know Fleet Street. And to my 
equal astonishment and pleasure he said, when I 
explained my system to him: "Couldn't have a bet- 
ter!" And he proceeded to remark positively that 
the man who had a decent system and the nerve to 



178 PARIS NIGHTS 

stick to it through all crises, would infallibly win 
from the tables — not a lot, but an average of sev- 
eral louis per sitting of two hours. "Gambling," 
he said, "is a matter of character. You have the 
right character," he added. You may guess 
whether I did not glow with joyous pride. "The 
tables make their money from the plunging fools," 
I said, privately, "and I am not a fool." A man 
was pointed out to me who extracted a regular in- 
come from the tables. "But why don't the author- 
ities forbid him the rooms?" I demanded, "Be- 
cause he's such a good advertisement. Can't you 
see?" I saw. 

We went to the Casino late after lunch. I cut 
myself adrift from the rest of the party and began 
instantly to play. In forty-five minutes, with my 
"system," I had made forty-five francs. And then 
the rest of the party reappeared and talked about 
tea, and trains, and dinner. "Tea!" I murmured 
disgusted (yet I have a profound passion for tea), 
"when I am netting a franc a minute!" However, 
I yielded, and we went and had tea at the Restau- 
rant de Paris across the way. And over the white- 
and-silver of the tea-table, in the falling twilight, 
with the incomparable mountain landscape in front 
of us, and the most chic and decadent Parisianism 
around us, we talked roulette. Then the Russian 
Grand Duke who had won several thousand 
pounds in a few minutes a week or two before, came 
veritably and ducally in, and sat at the next table. 
There was no mistaking his likeness to the Tsar. 
It is most extraordinary how the propinquity of a 



"MONTE" 179 

Grand Duke, experienced for the first time, affects 
even the proverbial phlegm of a British novelist. 
I seemed to be moving in a perfect atmosphere of 
Grand Dukes! And I, too, had won! The art of 
literature seemed a very little thing. 

(7» *?* t5» «5* 

After I had made fifty and forty-five francs 
at two sittings, I developed suddenly, without vis- 
iting the tables again, into a complete and thorough 
gambler. I picked up all the technical terms like 
picking up marbles — the greater martingale, the 
lesser martingale, "en plein," "a cheval," "the horses 
of seventeen," "last square," and so on, and so on — 
and I had my own original theories about the al- 
leged superiority of red-or-black to odd-or-even in 
betting on the even chances. In short, for many 
hours I lived roulette. I ate roulette for dinner, 
drank it in my Vichy, and smoked it in my cigar. 
At first I pretended that I was only pretending to 
be interested in gambling as a means of earning a 
livelihood (call it honest or dishonest, as you 
please) . Then the average sensible man in me be- 
gan to have rather a bad time, really. I frankly 
acknowledged to myself that I was veritably keen 
on the thing. I said: "Of course, ordinary people 
believe that the tables must win, but we who are 
initiated know better. All you want in order to 
win is a prudent system and great force of char- 
acter." And I decided that it would be idle, that 
it would be falsely modest, that it would be inane, 
to deny that I had exceptional force of character. 
And beautiful schemes formed themselves in my 



180 PARIS NIGHTS 

mind: how I would gain a certain sum, and then 
increase my "units" from five-franc pieces to louis, 
and so quadruple the winnings, and how I would 
get a friend to practise the same system, and so 
double them again, and how generally we would 
have a quietly merry time at the expense of the 
tables during the next month. 

And I was so calm, cool, collected, impassive. 
There was no hurry. I would not go to Monte 
Carlo the next day, but perhaps the day after. 
However, the next day proved to be very wet, and 
I was alone and idle, my friends being otherwise 
engaged, and hence I was simply obliged to go to 
Monte Carlo. I didn't wish to go, but what could 
one do? Before starting, I reflected: "Well, there's 
just a chance — such things have been known," and 
I took a substantial part of my financial resources 
out of my pocket-book, and locked that reserve up 
in a drawer. After this, who will dare to say that I 
was not cool and sagacious? The journey to Monte 
Carlo seemed very long. Just as I was entering 
the ornate portals I met some friends who had seen 
me there the previous day. The thought flashed 
through my mind: "These people will think I have 
got caught in the meshes of the vice just like ordi- 
nary idiots, whereas, of course my case is not or- 
dinary at all." So I quickly explained to them that 
it was very wet (as if they couldn't see), and that 
my other friends had left me, and that I had come 
to Monte Carlo merely to kill time. They ap- 
peared to regard this explanation as unnecessaiy. 

»7* €?* (?• V* 



"MONTE" 181 

I had a fancy for the table where I had previously 
played and won. I went to it, and by extraordi- 
nary good fortune secured a chair — a difficult thing 
to get in the afternoons. Behold me seated next 
door to a croupier, side by side with regular fre- 
quenters, regular practisers of systems, and doubt- 
less envied by the outer ring of players and specta- 
tors ! I was annoyed to find that every other occu- 
pant of a chair had a little printed card in black and 
red on which he marked the winning numbers. I 
had neglected to provide myself with this contriv- 
ance, and I felt conspicuous; I felt that I was not 
correct. However, I changed some gold for silver 
with the croupier, and laid the noble pieces in little 
piles in front of me, and looked as knowing and as 
initiated as I could. And at the first opening of- 
fered by the play I began the operation of my sys- 
tem, backing red, after black had won three times. 
Black won the fourth time, and I had lost five 
francs. . . . Black won the sixth time and I had lost 
thirty-five francs. Black won the seventh time, and 
I had lost seventy-five francs. "Steady, cool cus- 
tomer!" I addressed myself. I put down four louis 
(and kindly remember that in these hard times 
four louis is four louis — three English pounds and 
four English shillings), and, incredible to relate, 
black won the eighth time, and I had lost a hundred 
and fifty-five francs. The time occupied was a 
mere nine minutes. It was at this point that the 
"nerve" and the "force of character" were required, 
for it was an essential part of my system to "cut the 
loss" at the eighth turn. I said: "Hadn't I better 



182 PARIS NIGHTS 

put down eight louis and win all back again, just 
this once? Red's absolutely certain to win next 
time." But my confounded force of character came 
in, and forced me to cut the loss, and stick strictly 
to the system. And at the ninth spin red did win. 
If I had only put down that eight louis I should 
have been all right. I was extremely annoyed, 
especially when I realised that, even with decent 
luck, it would take me the best part of three hours 
to regain that hundred and fifty-five francs. 

t?* <5* €?• <5* 

I was shaken. I was like a pugilist who had 
been knocked down in a prize fight, and hasn't quite 
made up his mind whether, on the whole, he won't 
be more comfortable, in the long run, where he is. 
I was like a soldier under a heavy fire, arguing with 
himself rapidly whether he prefers to be a Balaclava 
hero with death or the workhouse, or just a plain, 
ordinary, prudent Tommy. I was struck amid- 
ships. Then an American person behind my chair, 
just a casual foolish plunger, of the class out of 
which the Casino makes its profits, put a thousand 
franc note on the odd numbers, and thirty-three 
turned up. "A thousand for a thousand," said the 
croupier mechanically and nonchalantly, and handed 
to the foolish plunger the equivalent of eighty 
pounds sterling. And about two minutes after- 
wards the same foolish plunger made a hundred and 
sixty pounds at another single stroke. It was 
odious; I tell you positively it was odious. I col- 
lected the shattered bits of my character out of my 
boots, and recommenced my system; made a bit; 



"MONTE" 183 

felt better ; and then zero turned up twice — most un- 
settling, even when zero means only that your stake 
is "held over." Then two old and fussy ladies came 
and gambled very seriously over my head, and de- 
ranged my hair with the end of the rake in raking 
up their miserable winnings. . . . At five o'clock 
I had lost a hundred and ninety-five francs. I 
don't mind working hard, at great nervous tension, 
in a vitiated atmosphere, if I can reckon on netting 
a franc a minute; but I have a sort of objection 
to three laborious sittings such as I endured 
that week when the grand result is a dead loss of 
four pounds. I somehow failed to see the 
point. I departed in disgust, and ordered tea at 
the Cafe de Paris, not the Restaurant de Paris (I 
was in no mood for Grand Dukes). And while I 
imbibed the tea, a heated altercation went on inside 
me between the average sensible man and the man 
who knew that money could be made out of the 
tables and that gambling was a question of nerves, 
etc. It was a pretty show, that altercation. In 
about ten rounds the average sensible man had 
knocked his opponent right out of the ring. I 
breathed a long breath, and seemed to wake up out 
of a nightmare. Did I regret the episode? I re- 
gretted the ruin, not the episode. For had I not all 
the time been studying hmnan nature and getting 
material? Besides that, as I grow older I grow 
too wise. Says Montaigne: "Wisdome hath hir ex- 
cesses, and no leise need of moderation, then follie." 
(The italics are Montaigne's) . . . And there's 
a good deal in my system after all. 



IV 

A DIVERSION AT SAN REMO 

The Royal Hotel, San Remo, has the reputation 
of being the best hotel, and the most expensive, on 
the Italian Riviera. It is the abode of correctness 
and wealth, and if a stray novelist or so is discov- 
ered there, that is only an accident. It provides 
distractions of all kinds for its guests: bands of 
music, conjuring shows, dances; and that week it 
provided quite a new thing in the way of distraction, 
namely, an address from Prebendary Carlile, head 
of the Church Army, which was quite truthfully 
described as a "national antidote to indiscriminate 
charity." We looked forward to that address; it 
was a novelty. And if we of the Royal Hotel had 
a fault, our fault was a tendency, after we had paid 
our hotel bills, to indiscriminate charity. Indis- 
criminate charity salves the conscience just 
as well as the other kind, and though it 
costs as much in money, it costs less in 
trouble. However, we liked to be castigated for 
our sins, and, in the absence of Father Vaughan, we 
anticipated with pleasure Mr. Carlile. We did 
not all go. None of the representatives of ten dif- 
ferent Continental aristocracies and plutocracies 
went. Nor did any young and beautiful persons of 
any nation go. As a fact, it was a lovely afternoon. 

184 



SAN REMO 185 

To atone for these defections, the solid respectabil- 
ity of all San Remo swarmed into the hotel. (A no- 
tice had been posted that it might order its carriages 
for 3.30.) We made an unprepossessing assem- 
blage. I am far removed from the first blush of 
youth ; but I believe I was almost the youngest per- 
son present, save a boy who had been meanly 
"pressed" by his white-haired father. We were 
chiefly old, stout, plain, and of dissatisfied visage. 
Many of us had never been married, and never 
would be. We were prepared to be very grave. 
But the mischief was that Mr. Carlile would not be 
grave. 

Mr. Carlile looked like a retired colonel who had 
dressed by mistake in clerical raiment. His hue 
was ruddy, his eye clear, and his moustache mar- 
tial. He is of a naturally cheerful disposition. It 
is impossible not to like him, not to admire him, not 
to respect him. It really requires considerable self- 
restraint, after he has been speaking for a few min- 
utes, not to pelt him with sovereigns for the prose- 
cution of his work. Still, appreciation of humour 
was scarcely our strong point. We could not laugh 
without severe effort. We were unaccustomed to 
laugh. It is no use pretending that we were not a 
serious conclave (we were not basking in the sun, 
nor dashing across the country in our Fiat cars ; tve 
had the interests of the Empire at heart). There- 
fore, though we took the Prebendary's humorous de- 
nunciation of our indiscriminate charity with fairly 
good grace, we should have preferred it with a little 
less facetiousness. People burdened as we were 



186 PARIS NIGHTS 

with the responsibilities of Empire ought not to be 
expected to laugh. As protectionists, we were not, 
if the truth is to be told, in a mood for gaiety. 
Hence we did not laugh; we hardly smiled. We 
just listened soberly to the Prebendary, who, after 
he had told us what we ought not to do, told us 
what we ought to do. 

(5» (5* €?• «5* 

"What we try to do," he said, "is to bridge the 
gulf — to bridge the gulf between the East End 
and the West End. We don't want your money, 
we want your help, we want each of you to take up 
one person and look after him. That is the only 
way to bridge the gulf." He kept on emphasising 
the phrase "bridge the gulf"; and to illustrate it, he 
mentioned a Christmas pudding that was sent from 
a Royal palace to his "Pudding Sunday" orgy la- 
belled for "the poorest and loneliest widow." "We 
soon found her," he said. "She worked from 8.30 
a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and again two hours at night, 
sewing buttons, and in a good week she earned six 
shillings. Her right hand was all distorted by rheu- 
matism, so that to sew gave her great pain. We 
found her, and we pushed her upstairs, with great 
difficulty — because she was so bad with bronchitis — 
and she had her pudding. Someone insisted on giv- 
ing her Is. a week for life, and someone else insisted 
on giving her 2s. a week for life, so now she's a 
blooming millionaire. Give us money, if you like, 
but please don't give us any more money for 
her. . . ." "There's another class of women," 
continued the Prebendary, "the drunkards. 



SAN REMO 187 

Drunkenness is growing among women owing to 
the evil of grocers' licences. We should like some 
of you to take up a drunken woman apiece and look 
after her. We can easily find you a nice, gentle 
creature, to whom getting drunk is no more than 
getting cross is to us. Very nice women are drunk- 
ards, and they can be reclaimed by bridging the 
gulf. Then there's the hooligans — you have them 
on the Riviera, too. I've had a good deal of expe- 
rience of them myself. I was once picked up for 
dead near the Army and Navy Stores after meeting 
a hooligan. Only the other day a man put his fist 
in my face and said: 'You've ruined our trade.' 
'What trade? The begging trade V I said, 'I wish 
I had.' And then the discharged prisoners. We 
offer five months' work to any discharged prisoner 
who cares to take it; there are 200,000 every year. 
I was talking to a prison official the other day, who 
told me that 90 per cent, of his 'cases' he sent to us. 
We reclaim about half of these. The other half 
break our hearts. One broke all our windows not 
long since . . ." 

And the Prebendary said also: "My greatest 
pleasure is a day, a whole day, in a thoroughly bad 
slum. I went down to Wigan for such a day, and 
at a meeting, when I asked whether anyone would 
come forward and speak up for beer, not for Christ, 
a man came along and threw three pence at my feet 
— remains of pawning his waistcoat — and then fell 
down dead drunk. We picked him up, and I 
charged a helper with 6d., so that he could be filled 
up with tea or coffee beyond his capacity to drink 



188 PARIS NIGHTS 

any more beer at all. I don't know whether it was 
the beer or the tea, but he joined us. All due to 
emotion, or excitement, perhaps ! Yes, but the next 
morning I was going out to the 7.30 prayer-meet- 
ing and I came across a Wigan collier dead drunk 
in the road. I tried to pick him up. I had my sur- 
plice on: I always wear my surplice, for the adver- 
tisement, and because people like to see it. And I 
couldn't pick him up. I was carrying my trombone 
in one hand. Then another man came along, and 
we couldn't get that drunkard up between us. And 
then who should come along but my reclaimed 
drunkard of the night before! He managed it." 

And the Prebendary further said: "Come some 
day and have lunch with me. It will take you two 
hours. You ought to chop ten bundles of fire- 
wood, but I'll let you off that. Or come and have 
tea. That will take four hours. There's a Starva- 
tion Supper to end it at 8.30, and something going 
on all the time. We have a brass band, thirty play- 
ers, all very bad. I'm the worst, with my trom- 
bone. We also have a women's concertina band. 
It's terrible. But it goes down. As one man said, 
'It mykes me 'ead ache, but it do do me 'eart good.' " 

e5* (5* «?• «?• 

Then Lord Dundonald proposed a vote of thanks 
to everybody who deserved to be thanked. He in- 
dicated that we ought to help Mr. Carlile, just to 
show our repentance for having allowed the people 
free access to public-houses for several centuries. 
(Faint applause.) Unless we prevented the people 
from getting at beer and unless we prevented aliens 



SAN REMO 189 

from entering England — (Loud applause) — Mr. 
Carlile's efforts would not succeed. If we stopped 
the supply of beer and of aliens then the principal 
steps [towards Utopia?] would have been accom- 
plished. This simple and comprehensible method 
of straightening out the social system appealed to 
us very strongly. I think we preferred it to 
"bridging the gulf." At the back of our minds was 
the idea that if we lent our motor-cars or our hus- 
bands' or brothers' motor-cars to the right candi- 
dates at election time we should be doing all that 
was necessary to ensure the millennium. Upon this 
we departed. In the glow of the meeting the 
scheme of attaching ourselves each to a nice, gentle 
drunken woman seemed attractive; but really, on 
reflection . . . ! There was a plate at the door. 
However, Mr. Carlile had himself said, "I don't de- 
pend much on the plate at the door." 



FONTAINEBLEAU— 1904-1909 



FIEST JOURNEY INTO THE FOREST 

Just to show how strange, mysterious, and ro- 
mantic life is, I will relate to you in a faithful nar- 
rative a few of my experiences the other day — it was 
a common Saturday. Some people may say that 
my experiences were after all quite ordinary expe- 
riences. After all, they were not. I was staying 
in a little house, unfamiliar to me, and beyond a 
radius of a few hundred yards I knew nothing of 
my surroundings, for I had arrived by train, and 
slept in the train. I felt that if I wandered far 
from that little house I should step into the un- 
known and the surprising. Even in the house I 
had to speak a foreign tongue; the bells rang in 
French. During the morning I walked about 
alone, not daring to go beyond the influence of the 
little house; I might have been a fly wandering 
within the small circle of lamplight on a tablecloth ; 
all about me lay vast undiscovered spaces. Then 
after lunch a curious machine came by itself up to 
the door of the little house. I daresay you have 
seen these machines. You sit over something mys- 
terious, with something still more mysterious in 
front of you. A singular liquid is poured into a 
tank; one drop explodes at a spark, and the explo- 
sion pushes the machine infinitesimally forward, 

193 



194 PARIS NIGHTS 

another drop explodes and pushes the machine in- 
finitesimally forward, and so on, and so on, and 
quicker and quicker, till you can outstrip 
trains. Such is the explanation given to me. 
I have a difficulty in believing it, but it seems to 
find general acceptance. However, the machine 
came up to the door of the little house, and took us 
off, four of us, all by itself; and after twisting about 
several lanes for a couple of minutes it ran us into 
a forest. I had somehow known all the time that 
that little house was on the edge of a great forest. 

(?• €?• t?* <•* 

Without being informed, I knew that it was a 
great forest, because against the first trees there was 
a large board which said "General Instructions for 
reading the signposts in the forest," and then a lot 
of details. No forest that was not a great forest, a 
mazy forest, and a dangerous forest to get lost in, 
would have had a notice board like that. As a 
matter of fact the forest was fifty miles in circum- 
ference. We plunged into it, further and further, 
exploding our way at the rate of twenty or thirty 
miles an hour, along a superb road which had a be- 
ginning and no end. Sometimes we saw a solitary 
horseman caracoling by the roadside ; sometimes we 
passed a team of horses slowly dragging a dead 
tree; sometimes we heard the sound of the wood- 
man's saw in the distance. Once or twice we de- 
tected a cloud of dust on the horizon of the road, and 
it came nearer and nearer, and proved to be a ma- 
chine like ours, speeding on some mysterious errand 
in the forest. And as we progressed we looked at 



INTO THE FOREST 195 

each other, and noticed that we were getting whiter 
and whiter — not merely our faces, but even our 
clothes. And for an extraordinary time we saw 
nothing but the road running away from under 
our wheels, and on either side trees, trees, trees — 
the beech, the oak, the hornbeam, the birch, the pine 
— interminable and impenetrable millions of them, 
prodigious in size, and holding strange glooms in 
the net of their leafless branches. And at inter- 
vals we passed cross-roads, disclosing glimpses, come 
and gone in a second, of other immense avenues of 
the same trees. And then, quite startlingly, quite 
without notice, we were out of the forest; it was 
just as if we were in a train and had come out of a 
tunnel. 

And we had fallen into the midst of a very little 
village, sleeping on the edge of the forest, and 
watched over by a very large cathedral. Most of 
the cathedral had ceased to exist, including one side 
of the dizzy tower, but enough was left to instil awe. 
A butcher came with great keys (why a butcher, if 
the world is so commonplace as people make out?), 
and we entered the cathedral; and though outside 
the sun was hot, the interior of the vast fane was ice- 
cold, chilling the bones. And the cathedral was 
full of realistic statues of the Virgin, such as could 
only have been allowed to survive in an ice-cold 
cathedral on the edge of a magic forest. And then 
we climbed a dark corkscrew staircase for about an 
hour, and came out (as startlingly as we had come 
out of the forest) on the brink of a precipice two 
hundred feet deep. There was no rail. One little 



196 PARIS NIGHTS 

step, and that night our ghosts would have begun 
to haunt the remoter glades of the forest. The 
butcher laughed, and leaned over ; perhaps he could 
do this with impunity because he was dressed in 
blue; I don't know. 

«?• «5* €?• t7* 

Soon afterwards the curious untiring machine had 
swept us into the forest again. And now the for- 
est became more and more sinister, and beautiful 
with a dreadful beauty. Great processions of 
mighty and tremendous rocks straggled over hill- 
ocks, and made chasms and promontories, and lairs 
for tigers — tigers that burn bright in the night. 
But the road was always smooth, and it seemed non- 
chalant towards all these wonders. And presently 
it took us safely out of the forest once again. And 
this time we were in a town, a town that by some 
mistake of chronology had got into the wrong cen- 
tury ; the mistake was a very gross one indeed. For 
this town had a fort with dungeons and things, and 
a moat all round it, and the quaintest streets and 
bridges and roofs and river and craft. And pro- 
cessions in charge of nuns were walking to and fro 
in the grass grown streets. And not only were the 
houses and shops quaint in the highest degree, but 
the shopkeepers also were all quaint. A grey- 
headed tailor dressed in black stood at the door of 
his shop, and his figure offered such a quaint spec- 
tacle that one of my friends and myself exclaimed 
at the same instant: "How Balzacian!" And we 
began to talk about Balzac's great novel "Ursule 
Mirouet." It was as if that novel had come into 




HOW BALZACIAN ! (Page 196) 



INTO THE FOREST 197 

actuality, and we were in the middle of it. Every- 
thing was Balzacian; those who have read Balzac's 
provincial stories will realise what that means. 
Yet we were able to buy modern cakes at a con- 
fectioner's. And we ordered tea, and sat at a table 
on the pavement in front of an antique inn. And 
close by us the landlady sat on a chair, and sewed, 
and watched us. I ventured into the great Bal- 
zacian kitchen of the inn, all rafters and copper 
pans, and found a pretty girl boiling water for our 
tea in one pan and milk for our tea in another pan. 
I told her it was wrong to boil the milk, but I could 
see she did not believe me. We were on the edge 
of the forest. 

«?* «5* t5* t5* 

And then the machine had carried us back into 
the forest. And this time we could see that it 
meant business. For it had chosen a road mightier 
than the others, and a road more determined to pene- 
trate the very heart of the forest. We travelled 
many miles with scarcely a curve, until there were 
more trees behind us than a thousand men could 
count in a thousand years. And then — you know 
what happened next. At least you ought to be able 
to guess. We came to a castle. In the centre of 
all forests there is an enchanted castle, and there 
was an enchanted castle in the centre of this forest. 
And as the forest was vast, so was the castle vast. 
And as the forest was beautiful, so was the castle 
beautiful. It was a sleeping castle; the night of 
history had overtaken it. We entered its portals by 
a magnificent double staircase, and there was one 



198 PARIS NIGHTS 

watchman there, like a lizard, under the great door- 
way. He showed us the wonders of the castle, con- 
ducting us through an endless series of noble and 
splendid interiors, furnished to the last detail of 
luxury, but silent, unpeopled, and forlorn. Only 
the clocks were alive. "There are sixty-eight clocks 
in the castle." (And ever since I have thought of 
those sixty-eight clocks ticking away there, with 
ten miles of trees on every side of them. ) And the 
interiors grew still more imposing. And at length 
we arrived at an immense apartment whose gor- 
geous and yet restrained magnificence drew from us 
audible murmurs of admiration. Prominent among 
the furniture was a great bed, hung with green and 
gold, and a glittering cradle; at the head of the 
cradle was poised a gold angel bearing a crown. 
Said the sleepy watchman: "Bed-chamber of Na- 
poleon, with cradle of the King of Rome." This 
was the secret of the forest. 




m 

* 

I* 

SI 












ON THE TERRACE OF THE CASTLE {Page 197) 



II 

SECOND JOURNEY INTO THE FOREST 

We glided swiftly into the forest as into a tun- 
nel. But after a while could be seen a silvered lane 
of stars overhead, a ceiling to the invisible double 
wall of trees. There were these stars, the rush of 
tonic wind in our faces, and the glare of the low- 
hung lanterns on the road that raced to meet us. 
The car swerved twice in its flight, the second time 
violently. We understood that there had been dan- 
ger. As the engine stopped, a great cross loomed 
up above us, intercepting certain rays; it stood in 
the middle of the road, which, dividing, enveloped 
its base, as the current of a river strokes an island. 
The doctor leaned over from the driving-seat and 
peered behind. In avoiding the cross he had mis- 
taken for part of the macadam an expanse of dust 
which rain and wind had caked ; and on this treach- 
ery the wheels had skidded. "Ca aurait pu etre 
une sale histoire!" he said briefly and drily. In the 
pause we pictured ourselves flung against the cross, 
dead or dying. I noticed that other roads joined 
ours at the cross, and that a large grassy space, cir- 
cular, separated us from the trees. As soon as we 
had recovered a little from the disconcerting glimpse 
of the next world, the doctor got down and re- 
started the engine, and our road began to race for- 

199 



200 PARIS NIGHTS 

ward to us again, under the narrow ceiling of stars. 
After monotonous miles, during which I pondered 
upon eternity, nature, the meaning of life, the pre- 
cariousness of my earthly situation, and the incipient 
hole in my boot-sole — all the common night-thoughts 
— we passed by a high obelisk (the primitive phal- 
lic symbol succeeding to the other), and turning to 
the right, followed an obscure gas-lit street of walls 
relieved by sculptured porticoes. Then came the 
vast and sombre courtyard of a vague palace, 
screened from us by a grille; we overtook a tram- 
car, a long, glazed box of electric light; and then 
we were suddenly in a bright and living town. We 
descended upon the terrace of a calm cafe, in front 
of which were ranged twin red-blossomed trees in 
green tubs, and a waiter in a large white apron and 
a tiny black jacket. 

«?* «5* t?* c5* 

The lights of the town lit the earth to an eleva- 
tion of about fifteen feet ; above that was the prim- 
eval and mysterious darkness, hiding even the house- 
tops. Within the planes of radiance people moved 
to and fro, appearing and disappearing on their 
secret errands; and glittering tramcars continually 
threaded the Square, attended by blue sparks. A 
monumental bull occupied a pedestal in the centre 
of the Square; parts of its body were lustrous, others 
intensely black, according to the incidence of the 
lights. My friends said it was the bull of Rosa 
Bonheur, the Amazon. Pointing to a dark void 
beyond the flanks of the bull, they said, too, that 
the palace was there, and spoke of the Council- 





GUARDS OK THE CASTLE (Page 19S) 



INTO THE FOREST 201 

Chamber of Napoleon, the cradle of the King of 
Rome, the boudoir of Marie Antoinette. I had to 
summon my faith in order to realise that I was in 
Fontainebleau, which hitherto had been to me chiefly 
a romantic name. In the deep and half-fearful 
pleasure of realisation — '"This also has happened to 
me !" — I was aware of the thrill which has shaken me 
on many similar occasions, each however unique : as 
when I first stepped on a foreign shore ; when I first 
saw the Alps, the Pyrenees ; when I first strolled on 
the grand boulevards ; when I first staked a coin at 
Monte Carlo; when I walked over the French fron- 
tier and read on a thing like a mile-post the sacred 
name "Italia"; and, most marvellous, when I stood 
alone in the Sahara and saw the vermilions and 
ochres of the Aures Mountains. This thrill, ever 
returning, is the reward of a perfect ingenuousness. 

<•* «•* i?* t?* 

I was shown a map, and as I studied it, the 
strangeness of the town's situation seduced me more 
than the thought of its history. For the town, with 
its lights, cars, cafes, shops, halls, palaces, theatres, 
hotels, and sponging-houses, was lost in the midst of 
the great forest. Impossible to enter it, or to leave 
it, without winding through those dark woods ! On 
the map I could trace all the roads, a dozen like 
ours, converging on the town. I had a vision of 
them, palely stretching through the interminable 
and sinister labyrinth of unquiet trees, and gradu- 
ally reaching the humanity of the town. And I had 
a vision of the recesses of the forest, where the deer 
wandered or couched. All around, on the rim of 



202 PARIS NIGHTS 

the forest, were significant names: the Moret and 
the Grez and the Franchard of Stevenson; Bar- 
bizon ; the Nemours of Balzac ; Larchant. Nor did 
I forget the forest scene of George Moore's "Mil- 
dred Lawson." 

After we had sat half an hour in front of glasses, 
we rushed back through the forest to the house on its 
confines whence we had come. The fascination of 
the town did not cease to draw me until, years later, 
I yielded and went definitely to live in it. 



Ill 

THE CASTLE GARDENS 

On the night of the Feast of Saint Louis the 
gardens of the palace are not locked as on other 
nights. The gardens are within the park, and the 
park is within the forest. I walked on that hot, clear 
night amid the parterres of flowers; and across 
shining water, over the regular tops of clipped trees, 
I saw the long f acades and the courts of the palace : 
pale walls of stone surmounted by steep slated roofs, 
and high red chimneys cut out against the glittering 
sky. An architecture whose character is set by the 
exaggerated slope of its immense roofs, which dwarf 
the walls they should only protect ! All the interest 
of the style is in these eventful roofs, chequered 
continually by the facings of upright dormers, 
pierced by little ovals, and continually interrupted 
by the perpendicularity of huge chimneys. The 
palace seems to live chiefly in its roof, and to be top- 
heavy. It is a forest of brick chimneys growing out 
of stone. Millions upon millions of red bricks had 
been raised and piled in elegant forms solely that 
the smoke of fires below might escape above the roof 
ridge : fires which in theory heated rooms, but which 
had never heated aught but their own chimneys : in- 
efficient and beautiful chimneys of picturesque, in- 
effectual hearths! Tin pipes and cowls, such as 

203 



204 PARIS NIGHTS 

sprout thickly on the roofs of Paris and London, 
would have been cheaper and better. (It is al- 
ways thus to practical matters that my mind runs.) 
In these monstrous and innumerable chimneys one 
saw eccentricity causing an absurd expense of 
means for a trifling end: sure mask of a debased 
style ! 

i5* c5* e?* «3* 

With malicious sadness I reflected that in most 
of those chimneys smoke would never ascend again. 
I thought of the hundreds of rooms, designed before 
architects understood the art of planning, crowded 
with gilt and mahogany furniture, smothered in 
hangings, tapestries, and carpets, sparkling with 
crystal whose cold gaiety is reflected in the polish of 
oak floors! And not a room but conjures up the 
splendour of the monarchs and the misery of the 
people of France! Not an object that is associated 
with the real welfare of the folk, the makers of the 
country! A museum now — the palace, the gardens, 
and the f ountained vistas of lake and canal — or shall 
I not say a mausoleum ? — whose title to fame, in the 
esteem of the open-mouthed, is that here Napoleon, 
the supreme scourge of families and costly spreader 
of ruin, wrote an illegible abdication. The docu- 
ment of abdication, which is, after all, only a fac- 
simile, and the greedy carp in the lake — these two 
phenomena divide the eyes of the open-mouthed. 
And not all the starers that come from the quarters 
of the world are more than sufficient to dot very 
sparsely the interminable polished floors and the 
great spaces of the gardens. The fantastic monu- 



















W*V 



?■ — . — i — . 

- 
1111 



' 



^ 



\ /ly 



THE CASTLE GARDENS (Page SOS) 



THE CASTLE GARDENS 205 

ment is preserved ostensibly as one of the glories of 
France! (Gloire, thou art French! Fontaine- 
bleau, Pasteur, the Eiffel Tower, Victor Hugo, the 
Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean Railway — each has 
been termed a gloire of France!) But the true 
reason of the monument's preservation is that it is 
too big to destroy. The later age has not the force 
nor the courage to raze it and parcel it and sell it, 
and give to the poor. It is a defiance to the later 
age of the age departed. Like a gigantic idol, it 
is kept gilded and tidy at terrific expense by a cult 
which tempers fear with disdain. 



IV 

AN ITINERARY 

I have lived for years in the forest of Fontaine- 
bleau, the largest forest in France, and one of the 
classic forests — I suppose — of the world. Not in 
a charcoal-burner's hut, nor in a cave, but in a town ; 
for the united towns of Avon and Fontainebleau 
happen to be in the forest itself, and you cannot 
either enter or quit them without passing through 
the forest ; thus it happens that, while inhabiting the 
recesses of a forest you can enjoy all the graces and 
conveniences of an imperial city (Fontainebleau is 
nothing if not Napoleonic) , even to cafes chantants, 
cinematograph theatres, and expensive fruiterers. 
I tramp daily, and often twice daily, in this forest, 
seldom reaching its edge, unless I do my tramping 
on a bicycle, and it is probably this familiarity with 
its fastnesses and this unfamiliarity with its periph- 
ery as a continuous whole that has given me what I 
believe to be a new idea for a tramping excursion: 
namely, a circuit of the forest of Fontainebleau. It 
is an enterprise which might take two days or two 
months. I may never accomplish it myself, but it 
ought to be accomplished by somebody, and I can 
guarantee its exceeding diversity and interest. The 
forest is surrounded by a ring of towns, townships, 
and villages of the most varied character. I think I 

206 



AN ITINERARY 207 

know every one of them, having arrived somehow 
at each of them by following radii from the centre. 
I propose to put down some un-Baedekerish but 
practical notes on each place, for the use and bene- 
fit of the tramper who has the wisdom to pursue my 
suggestion. 

«5* «5* «?* <?• 

One must begin with Moret. Moret is the show- 
place on the edge of the forest, and perhaps the old- 
est. I assisted some years ago at the celebration 
of its thousandth anniversary. It is only forty- 
three miles from Paris, on the main line of the Paris- 
Lyons-Mediterranean railway, an important junc- 
tion ; two hundred and fifty trains a day pass through 
the station. And yet it is one of the deadest places 
I ever had tea in. It lies low, on the banks of the 
Loing, about a mile above the confluence of the 
Seine and the Loing. It is dirty, not very healthy, 
and exceedingly picturesque. Its bridge, church, 
gates and donjon have been painted and sketched 
by millions of artists, professional and amateur. It- 
appears several times in each year's Salon. This 
is its curse — the same curse as that of Bruges: it is 
overrun by amateur artists. I am an amateur ar- 
tist myself; in summer I am not to be seen abroad 
without a sketching-stool, a portfolio, and a water- 
bottle in my hip pocket. But I hate, loathe and de- 
spise other amateur artists. Nothing would induce 
me to make one of the group of earnest dabbers and 
scratchers by the bridge at Moret. When I attack 
Nature, I must be alone, or, if another artist is to 
be there, he must be a certified professional. I 



208 PARIS NIGHTS 

have nothing else to say against Moret. There are 
several hotels, all mediocre. 

A more amusing and bracing place than Moret is 
its suburb St. Mammes, the port at the afore-men- 
tioned confluence, magnificently situated, and al- 
ways brightened by the traffic of barges, tugs, and 
other craft. There is an hotel and a pension. The 
Seine is a great and noble stream here, and abso- 
lutely unused by pleasure-craft. I do not know 
why. I once made a canoe and navigated the Ama- 
zonian flood, but the contrivance was too frail. 
Tugs would come rushing down, causing waves 
twelve inches high at least, and I was afraid, espe- 
cially as I had had the temerity to put a sail to 
the canoe. 

«5* (?• «?• <?• 

The tramper should cross the Seine here, and go 
through Champagne, a horrible town erected by the 
Creusot Steel Company — called, quite seriously, a 
"garden city." He then crosses the river again to 
Thomery — the grape town. The finest table 
grapes in France are grown at Thomery. 
Vines flourish in public on both sides of 
most streets, and public opinion is so powerful 
(on this one point) that the fruit is never stolen. 
Thomery's lesser neighbour, By, is equally vinous. 
These large villages offer very interesting studies in 
the results of specialisation. Hotels and pensions 
exist. 

From Thomery, going in a general direction 
north by west, it is necessary to penetrate a little 



AN ITINERARY 209 

into the forest, as the Seine is its boundary here, 
and there is no practical towing-path on the forest 
side of the river. You come down to the river at 
Valvins Bridge, and, following the left bank, you 
arrive at the little village of Les Platreries, which 
consists of about six houses and an hotel where the 
food is excellent and whose garden rises steeply 
straight into the forest. A mile farther on is the 
large village of Samois, also on the Seine. Lower 
Samois is too pretty — as pretty as a Christmas 
card. It is much frequented in summer; its hotel 
accommodation is inferior and expensive, and its 
reputation for strictly conventional propriety is 
scarcely excessive. However, a picturesque spot! 
Climb the very abrupt stony high street, and you 
come to Upper Samois, which is less sophisticated. 

From Samois (unless you choose to ferry across 
to Fericy and reach Melun by Fontaine-le-Port) 
you must cut through an arm of the forest to Bois- 
le-Roi. You are now getting toward the northern 
and less interesting extremity of the forest. Bois- 
le-Roi looks a perfect dream of a place from the 
station. But it is no such thing. It is residential. 
It is even respectably residential. All trains ex- 
cept the big expresses stop at Bois-le-Roi, which 
fact is a proof that the residents exert secret influ- 
ences upon the railway directors, and that there- 
fore they are the kind of resident whose notion of 
architecture is merely distressing. You can stay 
at Bois-le-Roi and live therein comfortably, but 
there is no reason why you should. 



210 PARIS NIGHTS 

The next place is Melun, which lies just to the 
north of the forest. It is the county town. It is 
noted for its brewery. It is well situated on a curve 
of the Seine, and it is more provincial (in the stodgy 
sense) and more ineffably tedious even than Moret. 
It possesses neither monuments nor charm. Yet 
the distant view of it — say from the height above 
Fontaine-le-Port, is ravishing at morn. 

From Melun you face about and strike due south, 
again cutting through a bit of the forest, to Chailly- 
en-Biere. (All the villages about here are "en 
biere") Chailly is just a nice plain average forest- 
edge village, and that is why I like it. I doubt if 
you could sleep there with advantage. But if you 
travel with your own tea, you might have excellent 
tea there. 

The next village is Barbizon, the :^iost renowned 
place in all the Fontainebleau region; a name full 
of romantic associations. It is utterly vulgarised, 
like Stratford-on-Avon. "Les Charmettes" has 
become a fashionable hotel with a private theatre 
and an orchestra during dinner. What would 
Rousseau, Daubigny and Millet say if they could 
see it now? Curiosity shops, art exhibitions, and a 
very large cafe! An appalling light railway, and 
all over everything the sticky slime of sophistication ! 
Walking about the lanes you have glimpses of su- 
perb studio interiors, furnished doubtless by War- 
ing or Lazard. Indeed Barbizon has now become 
naught but a target for the staring eyes of tourists 
from Arizona, and a place of abode for persons 
whose mentality leads them to believe that the at- 



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AN ITINERARY 211 

mosphere of this village is favourable to high-class 
painting. 

All the country round about here is exquisite. I 
have seen purple mornings in the fields nearly as 
good as any that Millet ever painted. A lane west- 
ward should be followed so that other nice average 
villages, St. Martin-en-Biere and Fleury-en-Biere 
can be seen. At Fleury there is a glorious castle, 
partly falling to ruin, and partly in process of res- 
toration. Thence, south-easterly, to Arbonne. 

«?• (5* <?• «5* 

Arbonne is only a few miles from Barbizon, and I 
fancy that it resembles what Barbizon used to be be- 
fore Barbizon was discovered by London and New 
York. It is a long, straggling place, with one im- 
possible and one quite possible hotel. As a field 
of action for the tramping painter I should say 
that it is unsurpassed in the department. From 
Arbonne you must cross another arm of the 
forest, and pass from the department of Seine-et- 
Marne to that of Seine-et-Oise, to the market town 
of Milly. From Milly onwards the human interest 
is less than the landscape interest until you come to 
Chapelle-la-Reine ; from there you are soon at 
Larchant, whose ruined cathedral is one of the lead- 
ing attractions of the forest edge. 

You are now within the sphere of Nemours. 
From Larchant to Nemours the only agreeable 
method of locomotion is by aeroplane. The high 
road is straight and level, and, owing to heavy traf- 
fic caused by quarries, atrociously bad. It reaches 
the acme of boredom. Its one merit is its brevity, 



212 PARIS NIGHTS 

about five miles. Nemours is a fine Balzacian 
town, on the Loing, with a picturesque canal in the 
heart of it, a frowning castle, a goodish church and 
bridge, a good hotel and delightful suburbs. 

(5* l5» !?• t5* 

At Nemours, cross the river, and keep to the high 
road which follows the Loing canal through Episy 
back to Moret. Or, in the alternative, refrain from 
crossing the river, and take the Paris high road, 
leaving it to the left at Bourron, and so reach Moret 
through Marlotte and Montigny. Marlotte and 
Montigny are Parisian villages in July, August, 
and September, new, artistic, snobbish; in winter 
they are quite tolerable. Montigny is "pictur- 
esquely situated" on the Loing, and Marlotte has a 
huge hotel. The road thence on the rim of the for- 
est back to Moret is delightful. 

I do not know how many miles you will have done 
— anything from sixty to a hundred and twenty 
probably — when you arrive for the second time in 
Moret. But you must find strength to struggle on- 
wards from Moret to Fontainebleau itself, about 
seven miles off in the forest. Fontainebleau con- 
tains one of the dearest hotels in the world. Ask 
for it, and go somewhere else. 



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SWITZERLAND— 1 909- 1 91 1 



THE HOTEL ON THE LANDSCAPE 

I do not mean the picturesque and gabled con- 
struction which on our own country-side has been 
restored to prosperity, though not to efficiency, by 
Americans travelling with money and motor-cars. 
I mean the uncompromising grand hotel — Majestic, 
Palace, Metropole, Royal, Splendide, Victoria, 
Belle Vue, Ritz, Savoy, Windsor, Continental, and 
supereminently Grand — which was perhaps first in- 
vented and compiled in Northumberland Avenue, 
and has now spread with its thousand windows and 
balconies over the entire world. I mean the hotel 
which is invariably referred to in daily newspapers 
as a "huge modern caravanserai." This hotel cannot 
be judged in a town. In a town, unless it possesses 
a river-front or a sea-esplanade, the eye never gets 
higher than its second storey, and as a spectacle the 
hotel resolves itself usually into a row of shops (for 
the sale of uselessness), with a large square hole in 
the middle manned by laced officials who die after a 
career devoted exclusively to the opening and shut- 
ting of glazed double-doors. 

To be fairly judged, the grand hotel must be seen 
alone on a landscape as vast as itself. The best 
country in which to see it is therefore Switzerland. 
True, the Riviera is regularly fringed with grand 

215 



216 PARIS NIGHTS 

hotels from Toulon to the other side of San Remo; 
but there they are so closely packed as to interfere 
with each other's impressiveness, and as a rule they 
are at too low an altitude. In Switzerland they 
occur in all conceivable and inconceivable situations. 
The official guide of the Swiss Society of Hotel 
Keepers gives us photographs of over eight hundred 
grand hotels, and it is by no means complete; in 
fact, some of the grandest consider themselves 
too grand to be in it, pictorially. Just as 
Germany is the land of pundits and aniline dyes, 
France of revolutions, England of beautiful women, 
and Scotland of sixpences, so is Switzerland the 
land of huge modern caravanserais. 

You may put Snowdon on the top of Ben Nevis 
and climb up the height of the total by the aid of 
railways, funiculars, racks and pinions, diligences 
and sledges; and when nothing but your own feet 
will take you any farther, you will see, in Switzer- 
land, a grand hotel, magically and incredibly raised 
aloft in the mountains; solitary — no town, no 
houses, nothing but this hotel hemmed in on all 
sides by snowy crags, and made impregnable by 
precipices and treacherous snow and ice. I always 
imagine that at the next great re-drawing of the 
map of Europe, when the lesser nationalities are 
to disappear, the Switzers will take armed refuge in 
their farthest grand hotels, and there defy the man- 
dates of the Concert. For the hotel, no matter how 
remote it be, lacks nothing that is mentioned in the 
dictionary of comfort. Beyond its walls your life 
is not worth twelve hours' purchase. You would 



THE HOTEL 217 

not die of hunger, because you would perish of cold. 
At best you might hit on some peasant's cottage in 
which the standards of existence had not changed 
for a century. But once pass within the portals of 
the grand hotel, and you become the spoiled darling 
of an intricate organisation that laughts at moun- 
tains, avalanches, and frost. You are surrounded 
by luxuries surpassing even the luxuries offered by 
the huge modern caravanserais of London. (For 
example, I believe that no London caravanserai 
was, until quite lately, steam-heated throughout.) 
You have the temperature of the- South, or of the 
North, by turning a handle, and the light of suns 
at midnight. You have the restaurants of Picca- 
dilly and the tea-rooms of St. James's Street. You 
eat to the music of wild artistes in red uniforms. 
You are amused by conjurers, bridge-drives, and 
cotillons. You can read the periodical literature 
of the world while reclining on upholstery from the 
most expensive houses in Tottenham Court Road 
and Oxford Street. You have a post-office, a tele- 
graph-office, and a telephone; pianos, pianolas, and 
musical-boxes. You go up to bed in a lift, and 
come down again to lunch in one. You need only 
ring a bell, and a specially trained man in clothes 
more glittering than yours will answer you softly 
in any language you please, and do anything you 
want except carry you bodily. . . . And on 
the other side of a pane of glass is the white peak, 
the virgin glacier, twenty degrees of frost, starva- 
tion, death — and Nature as obdurate as she was ten 
thousand years ago. Within the grand hotel civili- 



218 PARIS NIGHTS 

sation is so powerful that it governs the very colour 
of your necktie of an evening. Without it, cut off 
from it, in those mountains you would be fighting 
your fellows for existence according to the codes of 
primitive humanity. Put your nose against the 
dark window, after dinner, while the band is sooth- 
ing your digestion with a waltz, and in the distance 
you may see a greenish light. It is a star. And a 
little below it you may see a yellow light glimmer- 
ing. It is another grand hotel, by day generally in- 
visible, another eyrie de luxe. 

You go home and calmly say that you have been 
staying at the Grand Hotel Blank. But does it 
ever occur to you to wonder how it was all done? 
Does it ever occur to you that orchestras, lamp- 
shades, fresh eggs, fresh fish, vanilla ices, cham- 
pagne, and cut flowers do not grow on snow- 
wreathed crags? You have not been staying in a 
hotel, but in a miracle of seven storeys. In the 
sub-basement lie the wines. In the basement 
women are for ever washing linen and men for ever 
cooking. On the ground-floor all is eating and 
drinking and rhythm. Then come five storeys of 
slumber; and above that the attics where the tips 
are divided. 

In judging the hotel on the landscape, you must 
thus imaginatively realise what it is and what it 
means. 

«?* <?■ «?• t5* 

The eye needs to be trained before it can look 
seeingly at a grand hotel and disengage its beauty 
from the mists and distortions which prejudice has 



THE HOTEL 219 

created. This age (like any other age, for the mat- 
ter of that) has so little confidence in itself that it 
cannot believe that it has created anything beauti- 
ful. It is incapable of conceiving that an insur- 
ance office may be beautiful. It is convinced, with 
the late Sir William Harcourt, that New Scotland 
Yard is a monstrosity. It talks of the cost, not of 
the beauty, of the Piccadilly Hotel. No doubt the 
Romans, who were nevertheless a sound artistic race 
of the second rank, talked of the cost (in slaves) of 
their aqueducts, and would have been puzzled could 
they have seen us staring at the imperfect remains 
of the said aqueducts as interesting works of art. 
The notion that a hotel, even the most comfortable, 
is anything but a blot on the landscape, has prob- 
ably never yet occurred to a single one of the thou- 
sands of dilettanti who wander restlessly over the 
face of Europe admiring architecture and scenery. 
Hotels as visual objects are condemned offhand, 
without leave to appeal, unheard, or rather unseen 
— I mean really unseen. 

For several weeks, once, I passed daily in the vi- 
cinity of a huge modern caravanserai, which stood 
by itself on a mountain side in Switzerland; and my 
attitude towards that hotel was as abusive and vio- 
lent as Ruskin's towards railways. And then one 
evening, early, in the middle dusk, I came across it 
unexpectedly, when I was not prepared for it: it 
took me unawares and suddenly conquered me. I 
saw it in the mass, rising in an immense, irregular 
rectangle out of a floor of snow and a background 
of pines and firs. Its details had vanished. What 



220 PARIS NIGHTS 

I saw was not a series of parts, but the whole hotel, 
as one organism and entity. Only its eight floors 
were indicated by illuminated windows, and behind 
those windows I seemed to have a mysterious sense 
of its lifts continually ascending and descending. 
The apparition was impressive, poetic, almost over- 
whelming. It was of a piece with the moun- 
tains. It had simplicity, severity, grandeur. It 
was indubitably and movingly beautiful. My eye 
had been opened ; the training had been begun. 

I expected, naturally, that the next morning I 
should see the hotel again in its original ugliness. 
But no ! My view of it had been permanently al- 
tered. I had glimpsed the secret of the true man- 
ner of seeing a grand hotel. A grand hotel must 
be seen grandiosely — that is to say, it must be seen 
with a large sweep of the eye, and from a distance, 
and while the eye is upon its form the brain must 
appreciate its moral significance; for the one ex- 
plains the other. You do not examine Mont Blanc 
or an oil painting by Turner with a microscope, and 
you must not look at a grand hotel as you would 
look at a marble fountain or a miniature. 

Since the crepuscular hour above described, I 
have learnt to observe sympathetically the physiog- 
nomy of grand hotels, and I have discovered a new 
source of aesthetic pleasure. I remember on a 
morning in autumn, standing on a suspension 
bridge over the Dordogne and gazing at a feudal 
castle perched on a pre- feudal crag. I could not 
decide whether the feudal castle or the suspension 
bridge was the more romantic fact (for I am so con- 



THE HOTEL 221 

stituted as to see the j)henomena of the nineteenth 
century with the vision of the twenty- third), but 
the feudal castle, silhouetted against the flank of a 
great hill that shimmered in the sunshine, had an 
extraordinary beauty — moral as well as physical, 
possibly more moral than physical. As architec- 
ture it could not compare with the Parthenon or 
New Scotland Yard. But it was far from ugly, 
and it had an exquisite Tightness in the landscape. 
I understood that it had been put precisely there be- 
cause that was the unique place for it. And I un- 
derstood that its turrets and windows and roofs and 
walls had been constructed precisely as they were 
constructed because a whole series of complicated 
ends had to be attained which could have been at- 
tained in no other way. Here was a simple result 
of an unaffected human activity which had endeav- 
oured to achieve an honest utilitarian end, and, 
while succeeding, had succeeded also in producing 
a work of art that gave pleasure to a mind entirely 
unfeudal. A feudal castle on a crag as impossible 
to climb as to descend is, and always was, exotic, 
artificial, and against nature — like every effort of 
man ! — but it does, and always did, contribute to the 
happiness of peoples. 

Similarly I remember, on a morning in winter, 
standing on a wild country road, gazing at another 
castle perched on a pre-feudal crag. But this cas- 
tle was about fifteen times as big as the former one, 
and the crag had its earthy foot in a lake about a 
mile below. The scale of everything was terrific- 
ally larger. Still, the two castles, seen at propor- 



222 PARIS NIGHTS 

tionate distances, bore a strange, disconcerting, re- 
semblance the one to the other. The architecture 
of the second, as of the first, would not compare with 
the Parthenon or New Scotland Yard. But it was 
not ugly. And assuredly it had an exquisite Tight- 
ness in the landscape. I understood, far better 
than in the former instance, that it had been put 
precisely where it was, because no other spot would 
have been so suited to its purposes ; its geographical 
relation to the sun and the lake and the mountains 
had been perfectly adjusted. I understood pro- 
foundly the meaning of all those rows of windows 
and all those balconies facing the south and south- 
east. I understood profoundly the intention of the 
great glazed box at the base of the castle. I could 
read the words that the wreath of smoke from be- 
hind the turreted roof was writing on the slate of 
the sky, and those words Were "Chauffage central." 
From the fagades I could construct the plan and ar- 
rangement of the interior of the castle. I could 
instantly decide which of its two hundred chambers 
were the costliest, and which would be the last to be 
occupied and the first to be left. I could feel the 
valves of its heart rising and falling. Here was 
the simple result of an unaffected human activity, 
which had endeavoured to achieve an honest utili- 
tarian end, and, while succeeding, had succeeded 
also in giving pleasure to a mind representative of 
the twenty-third century. A grand hotel on a crag 
as impossible to climb as to descend is, and always 
will be, exotic, artificial, and against nature — like 
every effort of man! Why should a man want to 



THE HOTEL 223 

leave that pancake, England, and reside for weeks 
at a time in dizzy altitudes in order to stare at moun- 
tains and propel himself over snow and ice by means 
of skis, skates, sledges, and other unnatural dodges ? 
No one knows. But the ultimate sequel, gathered 
up and symbolised in the grand hotel, contributes 
to the happiness of peoples and gives joy to the eye 
that is not afflicted with moral cataract. 

And I am under no compulsion to confine my- 
self to Switzerland. I do not object to go to the 
other extreme and flit to the Sahara. Who that 
from afar off in the Algerian desert has seen the 
white tower of the Royal Hotel at Biskra, oasis of 
a hundred thousand palm-trees and twenty grand 
hotels, will deny either its moral or its physical 
beauty in that tremendously beautiful landscape? 

Conceivably, the judgment against hotel archi- 
tecture was fatally biassed in its origin by the hor- 
rible libels pictured on hotel notepapers. 

< 5% €?• <?• «?* 

In estimating the architecture of hotels, it must 
be borne in mind that they constitute the sole genu- 
ine contribution made by the modern epoch to the 
real history of architecture. The last previous con- 
tribution took the shape of railway stations, which, 
until the erection of the Lyons and the Orleans sta- 
tions in Paris — about seventy years after the birth 
of stations — were almost without exception deso- 
late failures. It will not be seriously argued, I 
suppose, that the first twenty years of grand hotels 
have added as much ugliness to the world's stock 
of ugliness as the first twenty years of railway sta- 



224 PARIS NIGHTS 

tions. If there exists a grand hotel as direfully 
squalid as King's Cross Station (palace of an un- 
dertaking with a capital of over sixty millions ster- 
ling) I should like to see it. Hotel architecture is 
the outcome of a new feature in the activity of so- 
ciety, and this fact must be taken into account. 
When a new grand hotel takes a page of a daily 
paper to announce itself as the "last word" of hotels 
— what it means is, roughly, the "first word," as 
distinguished from inarticulate babbling. 

Of course it is based on strictly utilitarian prin- 
ciples — and rightly. Even when the grand hotel 
blossoms into rich ornamentation, the aim is not 
beauty, but the attracting of clients. And the 
practical conditions, the shackles of utility, in which 
the architecture of hotels has to evolve, are ex- 
tremely severe and galling. In the end this will 
probably lead to a finer form of beauty 
than would otherwise have been achieved. In 
the first place a grand hotel, especially when 
it is situated "on the landscape," can have only one 
authentic face, and to this face the other three 
must be sacrificed. Already many hotels ad- 
vertise that every bedroom without exception 
looks south, or at any rate looks direct at 
whatever prospect the visitors have come to look at. 
This means that the hotel must have length without 
depth — that it must be a sort of vast wall pierced 
with windows. Further, the democratic quality of 
the social microcosm of a hotel necessitates an ex- 
ternal monotony of detail. In general, all the 
rooms on each floor must resemble each other, pos- 






THE HOTEL 225 

sessing the same advantages. If one has a balcony, 
all must have balconies. There must be no sacri- 
ficing of the amenities of a room here and there to 
demands of variety or balance in the elevation. 
Again, the hotel must be relatively lofty — not be- 
cause of lack of space, but to facilitate a complex 
service. The kitchens of Buckingham Palace may 
be a quarter of a mile from the dining-room, and 
people will say, "How wonderful!" But if a pot 
of tea had to be carried a quarter of a mile in a 
grand hotel, from the kitchen to a bedroom, people 
would say, "How absurd!" or, "How stewed!" 
The "layer" system of architecture is from all 
points of view indispensable to the grand hotel, and 
its scenic disadvantages must be met by the exercise 
of ingenuity. There are other problems confront- 
ing the hotel architecture, such as the fitting to- 
gether of very large public rooms with very small 
private rooms, and the obligation to minimise ex- 
ternally a whole vital department of the hotel (the 
kitchens, etc.) ; and I conceive that these problems 
are perhaps not the least exasperating. 

From the utilitarian standpoint the architect of 
hotels has unquestionably succeeded. The latest 
hotels are admirably planned ; and a good plan can- 
not result in an elevation entirely bad. One might 
say, indeed, that a good plan implies an elevation 
good in, at any rate, elementals. Save that bed- 
rooms are seldom sound-proof, and that they are 
nearly always too long for their breadth (the rea- 
son is obvious), not much fault can be found with 
the practical features of the newest hotel architec- 



226 PARIS NIGHTS 

ture. In essential matters hotel architecture is good. 
You may dissolve in ecstasy before the facade 
of the Chateau de Chambord ; but it is certainly the 
whited sepulchre of sacrificed comfort, health, and 
practicability. There also, but from a different 
and a less defensible cause, and to a different and 
not a better end, the importance of the main front 
rides roughly over numerous other considerations. 
In skilful planning no architecture of any period 
equals ours; and ours is the architecture of grand 
hotels. 

The beholder, before abruptly condemning that 
uniformity of feature which is the chief character- 
istic of the hotel on the landscape, must reflect that 
this is the natural outer expression of the spirit and 
needs of the hotel, and that it neither can be nor 
ought to be disguised. It is of the very essence of 
the building. It may be very slightly relieved by 
the employment of certain devices of grouping — 
as some architects in the United States have shown 
— but it must remain patent and paramount; and 
the ultimate beauty of more advanced styles will un- 
doubtedly spring from it and, in a minor degree, 
from the other inner conditions to which I have re- 
ferred. And even when the ultimate beauty has 
been accomplished the same thing will come to pass 
as has always come to pass in the gradual progress 
of schools of architecture. The pendulum will 
swing too far, and the best critics of those future 
days will point to the primitive erections of the 
early twentieth century and affirm that there has 
been a decadence since then, and that if the virtue of 



THE HOTEL 227 

architecture is to be maintained inspiration must be 
sought by returning to the first models, when men 
did not consciously think of beauty, but produced 
beauty unawares ! 

It was ever thus. 

The salvation of hotel architecture, up to this 
present, is that the grand hotel on the landscape, in 
nineteen cases out of twenty, is remuneratively oc- 
cupied only during some three or four months in the 
year. Which means that the annual interest on 
capital expenditure must be earned in that brief 
period. Which in turn means that architects have 
no money to squander on ornament in an age no- 
torious for its bad ornament. If the architect of 
the grand hotel were as little disturbed by the ques- 
tion of dividends as Francis the First was in creat- 
ing his Chambord and other marvels, the conse- 
quences might have been offensive even to the sym- 
pathetic eye. 

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the hotel architect 
may flatter himself that he has suddenly given ar- 
chitecture to a country which had none. This is a 
highly curious phenomenon. "Next door" to the 
grand hotel which so surprised me in the twilight is 
another human habitation, fairly representative of 
all the non-hotel architecture on the Swiss country- 
side. It is quaint, and it would not hurt a fly. 
But surely the grand hotel is man's more fitting an- 
swer to the challenge of the mountains? 



II 

HOTEL PROFILES 

The Egoist 

A little boy, aged about eight, with nearly all his 
front teeth gone, came down early for breakfast 
this morning while I was having mine. He asked 
me where the waiters were, and rang. When one 
arrived, the little boy discovered that he could speak 
no French. However, the waiter said "Cafe?" and 
he said "One"; but he told me that he also wanted 
buns. While breakfasting, he said to me that he 
had got up early because he was going down into 
the town that morning by the Funicular, as his 
mother was to buy him his Christmas present, a sil- 
ver lever watch. He said : "I hate to be hurried for 
anything. Now, at home, I have to go to school, and 
I get up early so that I shan't be hurried, but my 
breakfast is always late; so I have too much time 
before breakfast, and nothing to do, and too little 
time after breakfast when I've a lot to do." In an- 
swer to my question, he said gravely that he was 
going into the Navy. He knew the exam, was very 
stiff, and that if you failed at a certain age you 
were barred out altogether; and he asked me 
whether I thought it was better to try the exam, 
early with only a little preparation, or to leave it 
late with a long preparation. He thought the first 

228 



HOTEL PROFILES 229 

course was the best, because you could go in again 
if you failed. I asked him if he didn't want some 
jam. He said no, because the butter was so good, 
and if he had jam he wouldn't be able to taste the 
butter. He then rang the bell for more milk, and 
explained to me that he couldn't drink coffee 
strong, and the consequence was that he had a whole 
lot of coffee left and no milk to drink it with. 
. . . He said he lived in London, and that some 
shops down in the town were better than London 
shops. By this time a German had descended. 
He and I both laughed. But the child stuck to his 
point. We asked him: "What shops?" He said 
that jerseys and watches were nicer in the town 
than in London. In this he was right, and we had 
to admit it. As a complete resume, he said that 
there were fewer things in the town than in London, 
but some of the things were nicer. Then he ex- 
plained to the German his early rising, and added 
an alternative explanation, namely, that he had been 
sent to bed at 6.45, whereas 7.15 was his legal time. 

Later in the day I asked him if he would come 
down early again to-morrow and have breakfast 
with me. He said: "I don't know. I shall see." 
There was no pose in this. Simply a perfect pre- 
occupation with his own interests and welfare. I 
should say he is absolutely egotistic. He always 
employs natural, direct methods to get what he 
wants and to avoid what he doesn't want. 

I met him again a few afternoons later on the 
luge-track. He was very solemn. He said he had 
decided not to go in for the single-luge race, as it 



230 PARIS NIGHTS 

all depended on weight. I said: "Put stones in 
your pocket. Eat stones for breakfast." 

He laughed slightly and uncertainly. "You 
can't eat stones for breakfast," he said. "I'm get- 
ting on fine at skating. I can turn round on one 
leg." 

"Do you still fall?" (He was notorious for his 
tumbles. ) 

"Yes." 

"How often?" 

He reflected. Then: "About twelve times an 
hour. . . . If I skated all day and all night I 
should fall twelve twelves — 144, isn't it?" 

I said it would be twenty- four twelves. 

"Oh! I see ■" 

"Two hundred and " 



"Eighty-eight," he overtook me quickly. "But 
I didn't mean that. I meant all day and all night, 
you know — evening. People don't generally skate 
all through the night, do they?" Pause. "Six 
from 144 — 138, isn't it? I'll say 138, because you'd 
have to take half an hour off for dinner, wouldn't 
you?" 

He became silent, discussing seriously within 
himself whether half an hour would suffice for din- 
ner, without undue hurrying. 

The Bland Wanderer 

In the drawing-room to-night an old and soli- 
tary, but blandly cheerful, female wanderer re- 
counted numerous accidents at St. Moritz: legs 
broken in two places, shoulders broken, spines in- 



HOTEL PROFILES 231 

jured; also deaths. Further, the danger of catch- 
ing infectious diseases at St. Moritz. "One very 
large hotel, where everybody had influenza," etc. 
These recitals seemed to give her calm and serious 
pleasure. 

"Do you think this place is good for nerves? she 
broke out suddenly at me. I told her that in my 
opinion a hot bath and a day in bed would make 
any place good for nerves. "I mean the nerves of 
the body/ 3 she said inscrutably. Then she deviated 
into a long set description of the historic attack of 
Russian influenza which she had had several years 
ago, and which had kept her in bed for three months, 
since when she had never been the same woman. 
And she seemed to savour with placid joy the fact 
that she had never since been the same woman. 

Then she flew back to St. Moritz and the prices 
thereof. She said you could get pretty reasonable 
terms, even there, "provided you didn't mind going 
high up." Upon my saying that I actually pre- 
ferred being high up, she exclaimed: "I don't. 
I'm so afraid of fire. I'm always afraid of fire." 
She said that she had had two nephews at Cam- 
bridge. The second one took rooms at the top of 
the highest house in Cambridge, and the landlord 
was a drunkard. "My sister didn't seem to care, 
but I didn't know what to do! What could I do? 
Well, I bought him a non-inflammable rope." She 
smiled blandly. 

This allusion to death and inebriety prompted a 
sprightly young Yorkshirewoman, with the coun- 
try gift for yarn-spinning, to tell a tale of some- 



232 PARIS NIGHTS 

thing that had happened to her cousin, who gave 
lessons in domestic economy at a London Board 
School. A little girl, absent for two days, was 
questioned as to the reason. 

"I couldn't come." 

"But why not?" 

"I was kept . . . Please 'm, my mother's 
dead." 

"Well, wouldn't you be better here at school? 
When did she die?" 

"Yesterday. I must go back, please. I only 
came to tell you." 

"But why?" 

"Well, ma'am. She's lying on the table and I 
have to watch her." 

"Watch her?" 

"Yes. Because when father comes home drunk, 
he knocks her off, and I have to put her on again." 

This narration startled even the bridge-players, 
and there were protests of horror. But the philoso- 
phic wanderer, who had never been the same woman 
since Russian influenza, smiled placidly. 

"I knew something really much more awful than 
that," she said. "A young woman, well-known to 
me, had charge of a creche of thirty infants, and one 
day she took it into her head to amuse herself by 
changing all their clothes, so that at night they 
could not be identified; and many of them never 
were identified! She was such a merry girl! I 
knew all her brothers and sisters too! She wanted 
to go into a sisterhood, and she did, for a month. 
But the only thing she did there — well, one day she 



HOTEL PROFILES 233 

went down into the laundry and taught all the laun- 
dry-maids to polka. She was such a merry girl!" 

She smiled with extraordinary simplicity. 

"In the end," the bland wanderer continued, af- 
ter a little pause, "she went to America. America 
is such an odd place ! Once I got into a car at Phil- 
adelphia that had come from New York. The 
conductor showed me my berth. The bed was 
warm. I partly undressed and got into it, and 
drew the curtain. I was half asleep, when I felt 
a hand feeling me over through the curtain. I 
called out, and a man's voice said: 'It's all right. 
I'm only looking for my stick. I think I must have 
left it in the berth' 1 Another time a lot of student 
girls were in the same car with me. They all got 
into their beds — or berths or whatever you call it — 
about eight o'clock, wearing fancy jackets, and they 
sat up and ate candy. I was walking up and down, 
and every time I passed they implored me to have 
candy, and then they implored each other to try to 
persuade me. They were mostly named Sadie. 
At one in the morning they ordered iced drinks 
'round. I was obliged to drink with them. They 
tired me out, and then made me drink. I don't 
know what happened just after that, but I know 
that, at five in the morning, they were all sitting up 
and eating candy. I've travelled a good deal in 
America and it's such an odd place! It was just 
the place for that young woman to go to." 



Ill 

ON A MOUNTAIN 

Last week I did a thing which you may call hack- 
neyed or unhackneyed, according to your way of 
life. To some people an excursion to Hamp- 
stead Heath is a unique adventure: to others, 
a walk around the summit of Popocatapetl 
is all in the year's work. I went to Switzer- 
land and spent Easter on the top of a 
mountain. At any rate, the mountain was less 
hackneyed at that season than Rome or Seville, 
where the price of beds rises in proportion as reli- 
gious emotion falls. It was Marcus Aurelius An- 
toninus who sent me to the mountain. To mention 
Marcus Aurelius is almost as clear a sign of priggish 
affectation and tenth-rate preciosity as to quote 
Omar Khayyam; and I may interject defensively 
that I prefer Epictetus, the slave, to Marcus Au- 
relius, the neurotic emperor. Still, it was Marcus 
Aurelius who sent me to the mountain. He advised 
me, in certain circumstances, to climb high and then 
look down at human nature. 

I did so. My luggage alone cost me four francs 
excess in the Funicular. 

(?• (?• «?* €?• 

I had before me what I have been told — by others 
than the hotel proprietor — is one of the finest pano- 

234. 



ON A MOUNTAIN 235 

ramas in Europe. Across a Calvinistic lake, whose 
renown is familiar to the profane chiefly because 
Byron wrote a mediocre poem about a castle on its 
shores, rose the five-fanged Dent du Midi, twenty- 
five miles off, and ten thousand feet towards the 
sky ; other mountains, worthy companions of the il- 
lustrious Tooth, made a tremendous snowy semi- 
circle right and left; and I on my mountain 
fronted this semi-circle. The weather was perfect. 
Down below me, on the edge of the lake, was a 
continuous chain of towns, all full and crammed 
with the final products of civilisation, miles of them. 
There was everything in those towns that a nation 
whose destiny it is to satisfy the caprices of the 
English thought the English could possibly desire. 
Such things as baths, lifts, fish-knives, two-steps 
and rag-times, casinos, theatres, rackets, skates, hot- 
water bottles, whisky, beef-steaks, churches, chap- 
els, cameras, puttees, jig-saws, bridge-markers, 
clubs, China tea, phonographs, concert-halls, chari- 
table societies, money-changers, hygiene, picture 
post cards, even books — just cheap ones! It was 
dizzying to think of the refined complexity of ex- 
istence down there. It was impressive to think of 
the slow centuries of effort, struggle, discovery and 
invention that had gone to the production of that 
wondrous civilisation. It was perfectly distract- 
ing to think of the innumerable activities that were 
proceeding in all parts of the earth (for you could 
have coral from India's coral strand in those towns, 
and furs from Labrador, and skates from Birming- 
ham) to keep the vast organism in working order. 



236 PARIS NIGHTS 

And behind the chain of towns ran the railway 
line, along which flew the expresses with dining- 
cars and fresh flowers on the tables of the dining- 
cars, and living drivers on the footplates of the en- 
gines, whirling the salt of the earth to and fro, 
threading like torpedo-shuttles between far-distant 
centres of refinement. And behind the railway line 
spread the cultivated fields of these Swiss, who, af- 
ter all, in the intervals of passing dishes to stately 
guests in hotel-refectories, have a national life of 
their own; who indeed have shown more skill and 
commonsense in the organisation of posts, hotels, 
and military conscription, than any other nation ; so 
much so, that one gazes and wonders how on earth 
a race so thick-headed and tedious could ever have 
done it. 

(5* t5* (5* «?• 

I knew that I had all that before me, because I 
had been among it all, and had ascended and de- 
scended in the lifts, lolled in the casinos and the 
trains, and drunk the China tea. But I could not 
see it from the top of my mountain. All that I 
could see from the top of my mountain was a scat- 
tering of dolls' houses, and that scattering consti- 
tuted three towns ; with here and there a white cube 
overtopping the rest by half an inch, and that white 
cube was a grand hotel; and out of the upper face 
of the cube a wisp of vapour, and that wisp of va- 
pour was the smoke of a furnace that sent hot- 
water through miles of plumbing and heated 400 
radiators in 400 elegant apartments; and little 
stretches of ribbon, and these ribbons were boule- 



ON A MOUNTAIN 237 

vards bordered with great trees; and a puff of 
steam crawling along a fine wire, and that crawling 
puff was an international express ; and rectangular 
spaces like handkerchiefs fresh from a bad laundry, 
and those handkerchiefs were immense fields of 
vine; and a water-beetle on the still surface of the 
lake, and that water-beetle was a steamer licensed 
to carry 850 persons. And there was silence. 
The towns were feverishly living in ten thousand 
fashions, and made not a sound. Even the express 
breathed softly, like a child in another room. 

& t5* «5* c& 

The mountains remained impassive; they were 
too indifferent to be even contemptuous. Human- 
ity had only soiled their ankles: I could see all 
around that with all his jumping man had not 
found a perch higher than their ankles. It seemed 
to me painfully inept that humanity, having spent 
seven years in worming a hole through one of those 
mountains, should have filled the newspapers with 
the marvels of its hole, and should have fallen into 
the habit of calling its hole "the Simplon." The 
Simplon — that hole! It seemed to me that the ex- 
cellence of Swiss conscription was merely ridiculous 
in its exquisite unimportance. It seemed to me 
that I must have been absolutely mad to get myself 
excited about the January elections in a trifling isle 
called Britain, writing articles and pamphlets and 
rude letters, and estranging friends and thinking 
myself an earnest warrior in the van of progress. 
Land taxes ! I could not look down, or up, and see 
land taxes as aught but an infantile invention of 



238 PARIS NIGHTS 

comic opera. Two Chambers or one! Veto first 
or Budget first! Mr. F. E. Smith or Mr. Steel- 
Maitland! Ah! The tea-cup and the storm! 

The prescription of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 
had "acted." 

!?• €?* (5* t5* 

It is an exceedingly harmful prescription if 
employed long or often. Go to the top of a moun- 
tain by all means, but hurry down again quickly. 
The top of a mountain, instead of correcting your 
perspective, as is generally supported by philoso- 
phers for whom human existence is not good 
enough, falsifies it. Because it induces self-ag- 
grandisement. You draw illusive bigness from the 
mountain. You imagine that you are august, but 
you are not. If the man below was informed by 
telephone that a being august was gazing on him 
from above he would probably squint his eyes up- 
wards in the sunshine and assert with calmness that 
he couldn't even see a living speck on the mountain- 
crest. You who have gone up had better come 
down. You couldn't remain up twenty-four hours 
without the aid of the ant-like evolutions below, 
which you grandiosely despise. You couldn't have 
got up at all if a procession of those miserable con- 
ceited ants had not been up there before you. 

The detached philosophic mountain view of the 
littleness of things is a delightful and diverting 
amusement, and there is perhaps no harm in it so 
long as you don't really act on, it. If you begin 
really to act on it you at once become ridiculous, 
and especially ridiculous in the sight of mountains. 



ON A MOUNTAIN 239 

You commit the fatuity of despising the corporate 
toil which has made you what you are, and you 
prove nothing except that you have found a rather 
specious and glittering excuse for idleness, for cow- 
ardice, and for having permitted the stuffing to be 
knocked out of you. 

When I hear a man say, when I hear myself say : 
"I'm sick of politics," I always think: "What you 
want is six months in prison, or in a slum, or in a 
mine, or in a bakehouse, or in the skin of a woman. 
After that, we should see if you were sick of poli- 
tics." And when I hear a lot of people together 
say that they are sick of politics, then I am quite 
sure that politics are more than ever urgently in 
need of attention. It is at such moments that a 
man has an excellent opportunity of showing that 
he is a man. 



ENGLAND AGAIN— 1907 



THE GATE OF THE EMPIRE 

When one comes back to it, after long absence, 
one sees exactly the same staring, cold white cliffs 
under the same stars. Ministries may have fallen ; 
the salaries of music-hall artistes may have risen; 
Christmas boxes may have become a crime; war 
balloons may be in the air ; the strange notion may 
have sprouted that school children must be fed be- 
fore they are taught: but all these things are as 
nothing compared to the changeless fact of the 
island itself. You in the island are apt to forget 
that the sea is eternally beating round about all the 
political fuss you make; you are apt to forget that 
your 40-h.p. cars are rushing to and fro on a mere 
whale's back insecurely anchored in the Atlantic. 
You may call the Atlantic by soft, reassuring 
names, such as Irish Sea, North Sea, and silver 
streak; it remains the Atlantic, very careless of 
social progress, very rude. 

The ship under the stars swirls shaking over the 
starlit waves, and then bumps up against granite 
and wood, and amid cries ropes are thrown out, 
and so one is lashed to the island. Scarcely any 
reasonable harbours in this island! The inhabi- 
tants are obliged to throw stones into the sea till 

243 



244 PARIS NIGHTS 

they emerge like a geometrical reef, and vessels 
cling hard to the reef. One climbs on to it from 
the steamer; it is very long and thin, like a sword, 
and between shouting wind and water one precari- 
ously balances oneself on it. After some eighty 
years of steam, nothing more comfortable than the 
reef has yet been achieved. But far out on the 
water a black line may be discerned, with the sil- 
houettes of cranes and terrific engines. Denied a 
natural harbour, the island has at length deter- 
mined to have an unnatural harbour at this bleak 
and perilous spot. In another ten years or so the 
peaceful invader will no longer be compelled to 
fight with a real train for standing room on a storm- 
swept reef. 

t5* J* e5* «5* 

And that train! Electric light, corridors, lava- 
tories, and general brilliance! Luxuries incon- 
ceivable in the past! But, just to prove a robust 
conservatism, hot-water bottles remain as the sole 
protection against being frozen to death. 

"Can I get you a seat, sir?" 

It is the guard's tone that is the very essence of 
England. You may say he descries a shilling on 
the horizon. I don't care. That tone cannot be 
heard outside England. It is an honest tone, 
cheerful, kindly, the welling-up of a fundamental 
good nature. It is a tone which says : "I am a de- 
cent fellow, so are you; let us do the best for our- 
selves under difficulties." It is far more English 
than a beefsteak or a ground-landlord. It touches 
the returned exile profoundly, especially at the 



GATE OF THE EMPIRE 245 

dreadful hour of four a. m. And in replying, 
"Yes, please. Second. Not a smoker," one is say- 
ing, "Hail! Fellow-islander. You have appal- 
ling faults, but for sheer straightness you cannot be 
matched elsewhere." 

One comes to an oblong aperture on the reef, 
something resembling the aperture of a Punch and 
Judy show, and not much larger. In this aperture 
are a man, many thick cups, several urns, and some 
chunks of bread. One struggles up to the man. 

"Tea or coffee, sir?" 

"Hot milk," one says. 

"Hot milk!" he repeats. You have shocked his 
Toryism. You have dragged him out of the rut 
of tea and coffee, and he does not like it. How- 
ever — brave, resourceful fellow! — he pulls himself 
together for an immense effort, and gives you hot 
milk, and you stand there, in front of the aperture, 
under the stars and over the sea and in the blast, 
trying to keep the cup upright in a melee of elbows. 

This is the gate, and this the hospitality, of the 
greatest empire that, etc. 

"Can I take this cup to the train?" 

"Certainly, sir!" says the Punch and Judy man 
genially, as who should say: "God bless my soul! 
Aren't you in the country where anyone can choose 
the portmanteau that suits him out of a luggage 
van?" 

Now that is England! In France, Germany, 
Italy, there would have been a spacious golden cafe 
and all the drinks on earth, but one could never 
have got that cup out of the cafe without at least a 



246 PARIS NIGHTS 

stamped declaration signed by two commissioners 
of police and countersigned by a Consul. One 
makes a line of milk along the reef, and sits blow- 
ing and sipping what is left of the milk in the train. 
And when the train is ready to depart one demands 
of a porter: 

"What am I to do with this cup?" 

"Give it to me, sir." 

And he planks it down on the platform next a 
pillar, and leaves it. And off one goes. The ad- 
ventures of that thick mug are a beautiful demon- 
stration that the new England contains a lot of the 
old. It will ultimately reach the Punch and Judy 
show once more (not broken — perhaps cracked) ; 
not, however, by rules and regulations; but hig- 
gledy-piggledy, by mutual aid and good nature and 
good will. Be tranquil ; it will regain its counter. 

«?• t5* «?* c5* 

The fringe of villas, each primly asleep in its 
starlit garden, which borders the island and divides 
the hopfields from the Atlantic, is much wider 
than it used to be. But in the fields time has stood 
still. . . . Now, one has left the sea and the 
storm and the reef, and already one is forgetting 
that the island is an island. . . . Warmth 
gradually creeps up from the hot-water bottles to 
one's heart and eyes, and sleep comes as the train 
scurries into the empire. ... A loud reverber- 
ation, and one wakes up in a vast cavern, dimly lit, 
and sparsely peopled by a few brass-buttoned be- 
ings that have the air of dwarfs under its high, in- 
visible roof. They give it a name, and call it 



GATE OF THE EMPIRE 247 

Charing Cross, and one remembers that, since one 
last saw it, it fell down and demolished a theatre. 
Everything is shuttered in the cavern. Nothing 
to eat or to drink, or to read, but shutters. And 
shutters are so cold, and caverns so draughty. 

"Where can I get something to eat?" one de- 
mands. 

"Eat, sir?" A staggered pause, and the porter 
looks at one as if one were Oliver Twist. "There's 
the hotels, sir," he says, finally. 

Yet one has not come by a special, unique train, 
unexpected and startling. No ! That train knocks 
at the inner door of the empire every morning in 
every month in every year at the same hour, and 
it is always met by shutters. And the empire, by 
the fact of its accredited representatives in brass 
buttons and socialistic ties, is always taken aback 
by the desire of the peaceful invader to eat. 

<5» tJfl <5* *5* 

One wanders out into the frozen silence. Gas 
lamps patiently burning over acres of beautiful 
creosoted wood ! A dead cab or so ! A policeman ! 
Shutters everywhere: Nothing else. No change 
here. 

This is the changeless, ineffable Strand at Char- 
ing Cross, sacred as the Ganges. One cannot see 
a single new building. Yet they say London has 
been rebuilt. 

The door of the hotel is locked. And the night 
watchman opens with the same air of astonishment 
as the Punch and Judy man when one asked for 



248 PARIS NIGHTS' 

milk, and the railway porter when one asked for 
food. Every morning at that hour the train stops 
within fifty yards of the hotel door, and pitches out 
into London persons who have been up all night; 
and London blandly continues to be amazed at their 
arrival. A good English fellow, the watchman — 
almost certainly the elder brother of the train- 
guard. 

"I want a room and some breakfast." 

He cautiously relocks the door. 

"Yes, sir, as soon as the waiters are down. In 
about an hour, sir. I can take you to the lavatory 
now, sir, if that will do." 

Who said there was a new England? 

One sits overlooking the Strand, and tragically 
waiting. And presently, in the beginnings of the 
dawn, that pathetic, wistful ob j ect the first omnibus 
of the day rolls along — all by itself — no horses in 
front of it! And, after hours, a waiter descends 
as bright as a pin from his attic, and asks with a 
strong German accent whether one will have tea 
or coffee. The empire is waking up, and one is in 
the heart of it. 



II 

AN ESTABLISHMENT 

When I returned to England I came across a 
terrific establishment. As it may be more or less 
novel to you I will attempt to describe it, though 
the really right words for describing it do not exist 
in the English language. In the first place, it is 
a restaurant, where meals are served at almost any 
hour — and not meals such as you get in ordinary 
restaurants, but sane meals, spread amid flowers 
and diaper. Then it is also a creche, where babies 
are tended upon scientific principles; nothing that 
a baby needs is neglected. Older children are also 
looked after, and the whole question of education 
is deeply studied, and advice given. Also young 
men and women of sixteen or so are started in the 
world, and every information concerning careers 
is collected and freely given out. 

Another branch of the establishment is devoted 
to inexpensive but effective dressmaking, and still 
another to hats; here you will find the periodical 
literature of fashion, and all hints as to shopping. 
There is, further, a very efficient department of 
mending, highly curious and ingenious, which em- 
braces men's clothing. I discovered, too, a horti- 
cultural department for the encouragement of flow- 
ers, serving secondarily as a branch of the creche 

249 



250 PARIS NIGHTS 

and nursery. There is a fine art department, where 
reproductions of the great masters are to be seen 
and meditated upon, and an applied art depart- 
ment, full of antiques. Ii must mention the library, 
where the latest and the most ancient literatures 
fraternise on the same shelves; also the chamber- 
music department. 

Lastly, a portion of the establishment is simply 
nothing but an uncommon lodging-house for trav- 
ellers, where electric light, hot water bottles, and 
hot baths are not extras. I scarcely expect you to 
believe what I say ; nevertheless I have exaggerated 
in nothing. You would never guess where I en- 
countered this extraordinary, this incredible estab- 
lishment. It was No. 137 (the final number) in 
a perfectly ordinary long street in a residential 
suburb of a large town. When I expressed my 
surprise to the manager of the place, he looked at 
me as if I had come from Timbuctoo. "Why!" he 
exclaimed, "there are a hundred and thirty-six es- 
tablishments much like mine in this very street!" 
He was right; for what I had stumbled into was 
just the average cultivated Englishman's home. 

«?• t7* «5* «?• 

You must look at it as I looked at it in or- 
der to perceive what an organisation the thing is. 
The Englishman may totter continually on the 
edge of his income, but he does get value for his 
money. I do not mean the poor man, for he is too 
unskilled, and too hampered by lack of capital, to 
get value even for what money he has. Nor do I 
mean the wealthy man, who usually spends about 



AN ESTABLISHMENT 251 

five-sixths of his income in acquiring worries and 
nuisances. I mean the nice, usual professional or 
business islander, who by means of a small oblong 
piece of paper, marked £30 or so, once a month, 
attempts and accomplishes more than a native of 
the mainland would dream of on <£30 a week. The 
immense pyramid which that man and his wife 
build, wrong side up, on the blowsy head of one do- 
mestic servant is a truly astonishing phenomenon, 
and its frequency does not impair its extraordi- 
nariness. 

The mere machinery is tremendously complex. 
You lie awake at 6-30 in the uncommon lodging- 
house department, and you hear distant noises. It 
is the inverted apex of the pyramid starting into 
life. You might imagine that she would be in- 
tensely preoccupied by the complexity of her du- 
ties, and by her responsiblity. Not a bit. Open 
her head, and you would find nothing in it but the 
vision of a grocer's assistant and a new frock. You 
then hear weird bumps and gurgling noises. It is 
the hot water running up behind walls to meet you 
half-way from the kitchen. You catch the early 
vivacity of the creche. A row overhead means that 
a young man who has already studied the compara- 
tive anatomy of cigars is embarking on life. A 
tinkling of cymbals below — it is a young woman 
preparing to be attractive to some undiscovered 
young man in another street. 

*5* I?* «?• <?• 

The Englishman's home is assuredly the most 
elaborate organisation for sustaining and reproduc- 



252 PARIS NIGHTS 

ing life in the world — or at any rate, east of Sandy 
Hook. It becomes more and more elaborate, lux- 
urious, and efficient. For example, illumination 
is not the most important of its activities. Yet, 
you will generally find in it four different methods 
of illumination — electricity, gas, a few oil lamps 
in case of necessity, and candles stuck about. Only 
yesterday, as it seems, human fancy had not got 
beyond candles. Much the same with cookery. 
Even at a simple refection like afternoon tea you 
may well have jam boiled over gas, cake baked in 
the range, and tea kept hot by alcohol or electricity. 
I am not old, but I have known housewives who 
would neither eat nor offer to a guest, bread which 
they had not baked. They drew water from their 
own wells. And the idea of a public laundry would 
have horrified them. And before that generation 
there existed a generation which spun and wove at 
home. To-day the English household is dependent 
on cooperative methods for light, heat, much food, 
and several sorts of cleanliness. True (though it 
has abandoned baking), the idea of cooperative 
cookery horrifies it ! However, another generation 
is coming! And that generation, while expending 
no more energy than ourselves, will live in homes 
more complicatedly luxurious than ours. When 
it is house-hunting it will turn in scorn from an 
abode which has not a service of hot and cold 
water in every bedroom and a steam device for 
"washing up" without human fingers. And it will 
as soon think of keeping a private orchestra as of 



AN ESTABLISHMENT 253 

keeping a private cook — with her loves and her 
thirst. 

«?* «?• J* i7* 

Leave England and come back, and you cannot 
fail to see that this generation is already knocking 
at the door. When it once gets inside the door 
it will probably be more "house-proud," more in- 
clined to regard the dwelling as its toy, with which 
it can never tire of playing, than even the present 
generation. Such is a salient characteristic which 
strikes the returned traveller, and which the for- 
eigner goes back to his own country and talks about 
— namely, the tremendous and intense pre-occupa- 
tion of the English home with "comfort" — with 
every branch and sub-branch of comfort. 

(( Le confort anglais" is a phrase which has 
passed into the French language. On spiritual and 
intellectual matters the Englishman may be the 
most sweetly reasonable of creatures — always ready 
to compromise, and loathing discussion. But catch 
him compromising about his hot-water apparatus, 
the texture of a beefsteak, or the flushing of a 
cistern ! 



Ill 

AMUSEMENTS 

It is when one comes to survey with a fresh eye 
the amusements of the English race that one real- 
ises the incomprehensibility of existence. Here 
is the most serious people on earth — the only peo- 
ple, assuredly, with a genuine grasp of the prin- 
ciples of political wisdom — amusing itself untir- 
ingly with a play-ball. The ball may be large and 
soft, as in football, or small and hard, as in golf, or 
small and very hard, as in billiards, or neither one 
thing nor the other, as in cricket — it is always a 
ball. Abolish the sphere, and the flower of Eng- 
lish manhood would perish from ennui. 

The fact is, speaking broadly, there is only one 
amusement worth mentioning in England. Foot- 
ball dwarfs all the others. It has outrun cricket. 
This is a hard saying, but a true one. Football 
arouses more interest, passion, heat; it attracts far 
vaster crowds; it sheds more blood. Having be- 
held England, after absence, in the North and in 
the South, I seem to see my native country as an 
immense football ground, with a net across the Isle 
of Wight and another in the neighbourhood of 
John o' Groat's, and the entire population stamp- 
ing their feet on the cold, cold ground and hoarsely 
roaring at the bounces of a gigantic football. It is 

251 



AMUSEMENTS 255 

a great game, but watching it is a mysterious and 
peculiar amusement, full of contradictions. The 
physical conditions of getting into a football 
ground, of keeping life in one's veins while there, 
and of getting away from it, appear at first sight 
to preclude the possibility of amusement. They 
remind one of the Crimean War or the passage of 
the Beresina. A man will freeze to within half a 
degree of death on a football ground, and the same 
man will haughtily refuse to sit on anything less 
soft than plush at a music-hall. Such is the inex- 
plicable virtue of football. 

t7* *5* «5* <?* 

Further, a man will safely carry his sense of fair 
play past the gate of a cricket field, but he will 
leave it outside the turnstiles of a football ground. 
I refer to the relentless refusal of the man amusing 
himself at a football match to see any virtue in the 
other side. I refer to the howl of execration which 
can only be heard on a football ground. English 
public life is a series of pretences. And the great- 
est pretence of all is that football matches are eleven 
a side. Football matches are usually a battle be- 
tween eleven men and ten thousand and eleven; 
that is why the home team so seldom loses. 

The football crowd is religious, stern, grim, ter- 
rible, magnificent. It is prepared to sacrifice 
everything to an ideal. And even when its ideal 
gets tumbled out of the First League into the Sec- 
ond, it will not part with a single illusion. There 
are greater things than justice (which, after all, is 
a human invention, and unknown to nature), and 



256 PARIS NIGHTS 

this ferocious idealism is greater than justice. The 
explanation is that football is the oldest English 
game — far older than cricket, and it "throws back" 
to the true, deep sources of the English character. 
It is a weekly return to the beneficent and heroic 
simplicity of nature's methods. 

Another phenomenon of the chief English amuse- 
ment goes to show the religious sentiment that un- 
derlies it. A leading Spanish toreador will earn 
twenty thousand pounds a year. A leading Eng- 
lish jockey will make as much. A music-hall star 
can lay hands on several hundreds a week. A good 
tea-taster receives a thousand a year, and a cloak- 
room attendant at a fashionable hotel can always 
retire at the age of forty. Now, on the same scale, 
a great half-back, or a miraculous goalkeeper with 
the indispensable gift of being in two places at once, 
ought to earn about half a million a year. He is 
the idol of innumerable multitudes of enthusiasts; 
he can rouse them into heavenly ecstasy, or render 
them homicidal, with a turn of his foot. He is the 
theme of hundreds of newspapers. One town will 
cheerfully pay another a thousand pounds for the 
mere privilege of his citizenship. But his total per- 
sonal income would not keep a stockbroker's wife in 
hats! His uniform is the shabbiest uniform ever 
donned by a military genius, and he is taught to 
look forward to the tenancy of a tied public-house 
as an ultimate paradise! 

To the unimpassioned observer, nothing in Eng- 
lish national life seems more anomalous than this. 
It can be explained solely by stern religious senti- 



AMUSEMENTS 257 

merit. Call it pagan if you will, but even pagan 
religions were religious. The truth is that so foul 
a thing as money does not enter into the question. 
A footballer is treated like a sort of priest. "You 
have this rare and incommunicable gift," says the 
public to him in effect. "You can, for instance, do 
things with your head that the profane cannot do 
with their hands. It is no credit to you. You were 
born so. Yet a few years, and the gift will leave 
you! Then we shall cast you aside and forget 
you. But, in the meantime, you are like unto a 
precious vase. Keep yourself, therefore, holy and 
uncracked. There is no money in the career, no 
luxury, no soft cushions, nothing but sprained 
ankles, broken legs, abstinence, suspensions, and a 
pittance, followed by ingratitude and neglect. But 
you have the rare and incommunicable gift! And 
that is your exceeding reward." 

In view of such an attitude, to offer the salary 
of a County Court judge to a footballer would be 
an insult. 

c5* (?■ t5* t5* 

After indulging in the spectacle and the vocal 
gymnastics of a football match, the British public 
goes home to its wife, hurries her out, and they 
stand in the open street at a closed door for an 
hour, or it may be two hours, stolidly, grimly, 
fiercely, with obstinate chins, on pleasure bent. 
They are determined to see that door open, no mat- 
ter what the weather. Let it rain, let it freeze, they 
will stand there till the door opens. At last it does 
open, and they are so superbly eager to see what 



258 PARIS NIGHTS 

they shall see that they tumble over each other in 
order to arrive at the seats of delight. That which 
they long to witness with such an ardent longing is 
usually a scene of destruction. Let an artiste come 
forward and simply guarantee to smash a thousand 
plates in a quarter of an hour, and he will fill with 
enraptured souls the largest music-hall in England. 
Next to splendid destruction the British public is 
most amused by knockabout comedians, so called 
because they knock each other about in a manner 
which would be fatally tragic to any ordinary per- 
sons. 

Though this freshly-obtained impression of the 
amusements of the folk is perfectly sincere and fair, 
it is fair also to assert that the folk shine far more 
brightly at work and at propaganda than at play. 
The island folk, being utterly serious, have not yet 
given adequate attention to the amusement of the 
better part of themselves. But far up in the em- 
pyrean, where culture floats, the directors of the 
Stage Society and Miss Horniman are devoting 
their lives to the question. 



IV 

MANCHESTER 

Over thirty years ago I first used to go to 
Manchester on Tuesdays, in charge of people who 
could remember Waterloo, and I was taken into a 
vast and intricate palace, where we bought quanti- 
ties of things without paying for them — a method 
of acquisition strictly forbidden in our shop. This 
palace was called "Rylands." I knew not what 
"Rylands" was, but from the accents of awe in 
which the name was uttered I gathered that its im- 
portance in the universe was supreme. My sole 
impression of Manchester was an impression of ex- 
treme noise. Without shouting you could not 
make yourself heard in the streets. Ten years 
later, London-road Station had somehow become 
for me the gate of Paradise, and I was wont to es- 
cape into Manchester as a prisoner escapes into the 
open country. 

After twenty years' absence in London and Paris 
I began to revisit Manchester. My earliest im- 
pression will be my last. Still the same prodigious 
racket; the same gigantic altercation between irre- 
sistible iron and immovable paving stones! With 
the addition of the growling thunder of cars that 
seem to be continually bumping each other as if 
they were college eights! Lunch in a fashionable 
grill-room at Manchester constitutes an auditory 

259 



260 PARIS NIGHTS 

experience that could not be matched outside New 
York. In the great saloon there is no carpet on 
the polished planks of the floor, and the walls con- 
sist of highly resonant tiles, for Manchester would 
not willingly smother the slightest murmur of its 
immense reverberations. The tables are set close 
together, so that everybody can hear everybody; 
the waiters (exactly the same waiters that one meets 
at Monte Carlo or in the Champs Elysees) under- 
stand all languages save English, so that the Brit- 
isher must shout at them. Doors are for ever swing- 
ing, and people rush to and fro without surcease. It 
is Babel. In the background, a vague somewhere, 
an orchestra is beating; one catches the bass notes 
marking the measure, and occasionally a high 
squeak in the upper register. And superimposed 
on this, the lusty voice of a man of herculean phy- 
sique passionately chanting that "a-hunting we 
will go." 

t5* t5* t?* <5* 

One looks through the window and, astonished, 
observes one of those electric cars flying hugely past 
without a sound. The thunder within has chal- 
lenged and annihilated the heaviest thunder with- 
out. The experience is unique. One rushes forth 
in search of silence. Where can silence dwell in 
Manchester? The end of every street is a mystery 
of white fog, a possible home of silence. But no! 
Be sure that if one plucks out the heart of the mys- 
tery one will find a lorry preceded by at least eight 
iron hoofs. The Art Gallery! One passes in. 
Clack! Clack! Clack! It is the turnstile. And all 



MANCHESTER 261 

afternoon the advent of each student of the fine 
arts, of each cultivated dilettante, is announced by 
Clack! Clack! Clack! Two young men come in. 
Clack! Clack! Clack! Turner's "Decline of Car- 
thage" naturally arrests them. "By Jove!" says 
one, "that was something to tackle!" Clack! 
Clack! Clack! Out again, in search of silence. 
But over nearly every portal curves the legend: 
"Music all day." And outside the music-halls 
hired bawlers are bawling to the people to come in. 
At last, near the Infirmary, one sees a stationary 
cab, and across the window of this cab is printed, 
in letters of gold, the extraordinary, the magic, the 
wonderful, the amazing word : 

"Noiseless." 

Ah! The traditional, sublime humour of cab- 
men! 

But if my impression has remained, and even 
waxed, that Manchester would be an ideal metropo- 
lis for a nation of deaf mutes, my other early im- 
pression, of its artistic and intellectual primacy, is 
sharply renewed and intensified. Of late, not only 
by contact with Manchester men, but by the subtle 
physiognomy of Manchester streets and the reveal- 
ing gestures of the common intelligent person, I 
have been more than ever convinced that there is no 
place which can match its union of intellectual 
vigour, artistic perceptiveness, and political sa- 
gacity. 

t?* €?• «?• l5* 

Long and close intercourse with capitals has not 
in the slightest degree modified my youthful con- 



262 PARIS NIGHTS 

ception of Manchester, my admiration for its insti- 
tutions, and my deep respect for its opinion. Lon- 
don may patronise Manchester as it chooses, but 
you can catch in London's tone a secret awe, an 
inward conviction of essential inferiority. I have 
noticed this again and again. I know well that my 
view is shared by the fine flower of Fleet-street, and 
no dread of disagreeable insinuations or accusations 
shall prevent me from expressing my sentiments 
with my customary directness. There is no de- 
partment of artistic, intellectual, social, or political 
activity in which Manchester has not corporately 
surpassed London. And there have been very few 
occasions on which, when they have differed in 
opinion, Manchester has been as wrong as London. 

It is, of course, notorious that London is still agi- 
tated by more than one controversy which was defi- 
nitely settled by Manchester twenty years ago in 
the way in which London will settle it twenty years 
hence. Manchester is too proud to proclaim its 
fundamental supremacy in the island (though unal- 
terably convinced of it), and no other city would 
be such a fool as to proclaim it ; hence it is not pro- 
claimed. But it exists, and the general knowledge 
of it exists. 

The explanation of Manchester is twofold. 
First, its geographical situation, midway between 
the corrupting languor of the south and the too 
bleak hardness of the north. And, second, that it 
enjoys the advantages of a population as vast as 
that of London, without the disadvantages of either 
an exaggerated centralisation or of a capital. Lon- 



MANCHESTER 263 

don suffers from elephantiasis, a rush of blue blood 
to the head, vertigo, imperfect circulation, and other 
maladies. Bureaucratic and caste influences must 
always vitiate the existence of a capital, and I do 
not suppose that any great capital in Europe is the 
real source of its country's life and energy. Not 
Rome, but Milan! Not Madrid, but Barcelona! 
Not St. Petersburg, but Moscow! Not Berlin, 
but Hamburg and Munich! Not Paris, but the 
rest of France! Not London, but the Manchester 
area! 



LONDON 

There are probably other streets as ugly, as ut- 
terly bereft of the romantic, as Lots-road, Chelsea, 
but certainly nothing more desolating can exist in 
London. It was ten years since I had seen it, and 
now I saw it at its worst moment of the week, about 
ten o'clock of a Sunday morning. Some time be- 
fore I reached it I heard a humming vibration 
which grew louder and more impressive as I ap- 
proached. I passed (really) sixty-eight seagulls 
sitting in two straight rows on the railings of a de- 
serted County Council pier, and on a rusty lantern 
at the head of the pier was a sixty-ninth seagull, no 
doubt the secretary of their trade union. 

A mist lay over the river and over a man reading 
the "Referee" on an anchored barge, and nobody 
at all seemed to be taking any notice of the growing 
menace of this humming vibration. Then I came 
to a gigantic building, quite new to me — I had not 
suspected that such a thing was — a building which 
must be among the largest in London, a red brick 
building with a grandiose architectural effect, an 
overpowering affair, one of those affairs that man 
creates in order to show how small and puny he 
himself is. You could pile all the houses of a dozen 
neighbouring streets under the colossal roof of that 

264 



LONDON 265 

erection and leave room for a church or so. Ex- 
traordinary that a returned exile, interested in Lon- 
don, could have walked about London for days 
without even getting a glimpse of such hugeness. 

It was shut up, closed in, mysterious, inviolable. 
The gates of its yards were bolted. It bore no 
legend of its name and owner ; there was no sign of 
human life in it. And the humming vibration 
came out of it, and was visibly cracking walls and 
windows in the doll's-houses of Lots-road that 
shook at its feet. Lots-road got up to that thunder, 
went to bed to that thunder, ate bacon to it, and 
generally transacted its daily life. I gazed baffled 
at the building. No clue anywhere to the mystery ! 
Nothing but a proof of the determined tendency 
on the part of civilisation to imitate the romances 
of H. G. Wells! 

A milkman in a striped apron was ringing and 
ringing angrily at the grille of a locked public- 
house. I hate to question people in the street, but 
curiosity concerning a marvel is like love, stronger 
than hate. 

"That?" said the milkman peevishly. "That's 
the generating stytion for the electric rilewys." 

"Which railwaj^s?" I asked. 

"All of 'em," said he. "There's bin above sixty 
men killed there already." 

€?• *?• (?• «?* 

Who would have supposed, a few years ago, that 
romance would visit unromantic Lots-road in this 
strange and terrible manner, cracking it, smashing 
it, deafening it, making the vases rattle on its man- 



266 PARIS NIGHTS 

telpieces, and robbing it of sleep? Lots-road is 
now the true romantic centre of London. (It 
would probably prefer to be something else, but it 
is.) It holds the true symbol of the development 
of London's corporate life. 

You come to an unusual hole in the street, and 
enter it, and find yourself on a large floor sur- 
rounded by advertisements of whisky and art fur- 
niture. The whole floor suddenly sinks with you 
towards the centre of the earth, far below sewers. 
You emerge into a system of tunnels, and, 
guided by painted white hands, you traverse 
these tunnels till you arrive at a precipice. Then 
a suite of drawing-rooms, four or six, glides 
along the front of the precipice. Each saloon 
is lighted by scores of electric lamps, and the 
steel doors of each are magically thrown wide 
open. An attendant urges you to come in and 
sit down. You do so, and instantly the suite 
of rooms glides glittering away with you, curving 
through an endless subterranean passage, and stop- 
ping now and then for two seconds at a precipice. 
At last you get out, and hurry through more tun- 
nels, and another flying floor wafts you up out of 
the earth again, and you stagger into daylight and 
a strange street, and when your eyes have recovered 
themselves you perceive that the strange street is 
merely Holborn. . . . And all this because of 
the roaring necromancers' castle in Lots-road! 
All this impossible without the roaring necro- 
mancers' castle! 

People ejaculate, "The new Tubes!" and think 



LONDON 267 

they have described these astounding phenomena. 

But they have not. 

£ Si # £ 

The fact that strikes the traveller beyond all other 
facts of the new London is the immensity of the 
penalty which the Metropolis is now paying for its 
size. Tubes, electrified "Districts," petrol omni- 
buses, electric cars and cabs, and automobiles ; these 
are only the more theatrical aspects of an activity 
which permeates and exhausts the life of the com- 
munity. Locomotion has become an obsession in 
London; it has become a perfect nightmare. The 
city gets larger and larger, but the centre remains 
the centre and everybody must get to it. 

See the motor cars speeding over Barnes Com- 
mon to plunge into London. One after another, 
treading on each other's heels, scurrying, preoccu- 
pied, and malodorous, they fly past in an inter- 
minable procession for hours, to give a melodra- 
matic interest to the streets of London. See the 
attack on the omnibuses by a coldly-determined 
mob of workers outside Putney Station, and the 
stream that ceaselessly descends into Putney Sta- 
tion. Follow the omnibuses as they rush across 
the bridge into Fulham-road. See the girls on the 
top at 8 a. m. in the frosty fog. They are glad to 
be anywhere, even on the top. 

See the acrobatic young men who, all along the 
route, jump on to the step and drop off disap- 
pointed because there are already sixteen inside and 
eighteen out. Notice the fight at every stopping- 
place. Watch the gradual growth of the traffic, 



268 PARIS NIGHTS 

until the driver, from being a charioteer, is trans- 
formed into a solver of Chinese puzzles. And re- 
member that Fulham-road is one great highway out 
of fifty. Bend your head, and gaze through Lon- 
don clay into the tunnels full of gliding drawing- 
rooms and the drawing-rooms jammed with people. 
Think of the five hundred railway stations of all 
sorts in London, all at the same business of trans- 
porting people to the centre! Then put yourself 
in front of one station, the type-terminus, Liver- 
pool-street, and see the incredible thick, surging, 
bursting torrent that it vomits (there is no other 
word) from long before dawn till ten o'clock. 
And, finally, see the silent, sanguinary battles on 
bridges for common tram-cars and 'buses. 

Not clubs, not hotels, not cathedrals, not halls 
of song, not emporia, not mansions ; but this is Lon- 
don, now; this necessary, passionate, complex loco- 
motion ! All other phenomena are insignificant be- 
side it. 



VI 

INDUSTRY 

My native heath, thanks to the enterprise of Lon- 
don newspapers and the indestructibility of pictur- 
esque lies, has the reputation 'of being quite unlike 
the rest of England, but when I set foot in it after 
absence, it seems to me the most English piece of 
England that I ever came across. With extraor- 
dinary clearness I see it as absurdly, ridiculously, 
splendidly English. All the English characteris- 
tics are, quite remarkably, exaggerated in the Pot- 
teries. (That is perhaps why it is a butt for the 
organs of London civilisation.) This intensifying 
of a type is due no doubt to a certain isolation, 
caused partly by geography and partly by the in- 
spired genius of the gentleman who, in planning 
what is now the London and North- Western Rail- 
way, carefully diverted it from a populous district 
and sent it through a hamlet six miles away. On 
the 28 miles between Stafford and Crewe of the 
four-track way of the greatest line in England, not 
a town! And a solid population of a quarter of a 
million within gunshot! English methods! That 
is to say, the preposterous side of English methods. 

We practise in the Potteries the fine old English 
plan of not calling things by their names. We are 
one town, one unseparated mass of streets. We 

269 



270 PARIS NIGHTS 

are, in fact, the twelfth largest town in the United 
Kingdom (though you would never guess it) i. 
And the chief of our retail commerce and of our 
amusements are congregated in the centre of our 
town, as the custom is. But do not imagine that 
we will consent to call ourselves one town.* No! 
We pretend that we are six towns, and to carry 
out the pretence we have six town halls, six Mayors 
or chief bailiffs, six sanitary inspectors, six every- 
thing, including six jealousies. We find it so much 
more economical, convenient, and dignified, in deal- 
ing with public health, education, and railway, 
canal, and tramway companies to act by means of 
six mutually jealous authorities. 

*?• t?* *?• t5* 

We make your cups and saucers — and other 
earthen utensils. We have been making them for 
over a thousand years. And, since we are Eng- 
lish, we want to make them now as we made them 
a thousand years ago. We flatter ourselves that 
we; are a particularly hard-headed race, and we are. 
Steel drills would not get a new idea into our hard 
heads. We have a characteristic shrewd look, a 
sort of looking askance and suspicious. We are 
looking askance and suspicious at the insidious ap- 
proaches of science and scientific organisation. At 
the present moment the twelfth largest town is 
proposing to find a sum of .£250 (less than it 
spends on amusement in a single day) towards the 
cost of a central school of pottery. Mind, only 

* Since this was written a very modified form of federation 
has been introduced into the Potteries. 



INDUSTRY 271 

proposing! Up to three years ago (as has been 
publicly stated by a master-potter) we carped at 
scientific methods. "Carp" is an amiable word. We 
hated and loathed innovation. We do still. Only 
a scientific, adventurous, un-English manufacturer 
who has dared to innovate knows the depth and 
height, the terrific inertia, of that hate and that 
loathing. 

Oh, yes, we are fully aware of Germany! Yes- 
terday a successful manufacturer said to me — and 
these are his exact words, which I wrote down and 
read over to him: "Owing to superior technical 
knowledge, the general body of German manufac- 
turers are able to produce certain effects in china 
and in earthenware, which the general body of 
English manufacturers are incapable of produc- 
ing." However, we have already established two 
outlying minor technical schools, and we are pro- 
posing to find £250 privately towards a grand 
and imposing central technical college. Do not 
smile, you who read this. You are not arch- 
angels, either. Besides, when we like, we can 
produce the finest earthenware in the world. 
We are only just a tiny bit more English than you 
— that's all. And the Potteries is English indus- 
try in little — a glass for English manufacture to 
see itself in. 

t5* «?» t5* t5* 

For the rest, we are the typical industrial com- 
munity, presenting the typical phenomena of new 
England. We have made municipal parks out of 
wildernesses, and hired brass bands of music to 



272 PARIS NIGHTS 

play in them. We have quite six parks in our 
town. The character of our annual carnivals has 
improved out of recognition within living memoiy. 
Electricity no longer astounds us. We have pub- 
lic baths everywhere (though I have never heard 
that they rival our gasworks in contributing to the 
rates). Our public libraries are better and more 
numerous, though their chief function is still to 
fleet the idle hours of our daughters. Our roads 
are less awful. Our slums are decreasing. Our 
building regulations are stricter. Our sanitation 
is vastly improved; and in spite of asthma, lead- 
poisoning, and infant mortality our death-rate is 
midway between those of Manchester and Liver- 
pool. 

We grow steadily less drunken. Yet drunken- 
ness remains our worst vice, and in the social hier- 
archy none stands higher than the brewer, precisely 
as in the rest of England. We grow steadily less 
drunken, but even the intellectuals still think it 
odd and cranky to meet without drinking fluids 
admittedly harmful; and as for the workingman's 
beer . . . Knock the glass out of his hand 
and see! We grow steadily less drunken, but we 
possess some 750 licensed houses and not a single 
proper bookshop. No man could make a hundred 
pounds a year by selling books in the Potteries. 
We really do know a lot, and we have as many 
bathrooms per thousand as any industrial hive in 
this island, and as many advertisments of incom- 
parable soaps. We are in the way of perfection, 
and when we have conquered drunkenness, igno- 



INDUSTRY 273 

ranee, and dirt we shall have arrived there, with 
the rest of England. Dirt — a public slatternli- 
ness, a public and shameless flouting of the virtues 
of cleanliness and tidiness — is the most spectacular 
of our sins. 

We are the supreme land of picturesque con- 
trasts. On one day last week I saw a Town Clerk 
who had never heard of H. G. Wells; I walked 
five hundred yards and assisted at a performance 
of chamber-music by Bach and a discussion of the 
French slang of Huysmans; walked only another 
hundred yards and was, literally, stuck in an un- 
protected bog and extricated therefrom by the 
kindness of two girls who were rooting in a shawd- 
ruck for bits of coal. 

Lastly, with other industrial communities, we 
share the finest of all qualities — the power and the 
will to work. We do work. All of us work. We 
have no use for idlers. Climb a hill and survey 
our combined endeavour, and you will admit it to 
be magnificent. 



THE MIDLANDS— 1910-1911 



THE HANBRIDGE EMPIRE 

When I came into the palace, out of the streets 
where black human silhouettes moved on seemingly 
mysterious errands in the haze of high-hung elec- 
tric globes, I was met at the inner portal by the 
word "Welcome" in large gold letters. This 
greeting, I saw, was part of the elaborate me- 
chanics of the place. It reiterated its message mo- 
notonously to perhaps fifteen thousand visitors a 
week; nevertheless, it had a certain effectiveness, 
since it showed that the Hanbridge Theatres Com- 
pany Limited was striving after the right attitude 
towards the weekly fifteen thousand. At some pit 
doors the seekers after pleasure are received and 
herded as if they were criminals, or beggars. I en- 
tered with curiosity, for, though it is the business 
of my life to keep an eye on the enthralling social 
phenomena of Hanbridge, I had never been in its 
Empire. When I formed part of Hanbridge there 
was no Empire; nothing but sing-songs conducted 
by convivial chairmen with rapping hammers in 
public-houses whose blinds were drawn and whose 
posters were in manuscript. Not that I have ever 
assisted at one of those extinct sing-songs. They 
were as forbidden to me as a High Church service. 
The only convivial rapping chairman I ever beheld 

277 



278 PARIS NIGHTS 

was at Gatti's, under Charing Cross Station, 
twenty-two years ago. 

Now I saw an immense carved and gilded inte- 
rior, not as large as the Paris Opera, but assuredly 
capable of seating as many persons. My first 
thought was: "Why, it's just like a real music- 
hall!" I was so accustomed to regard Hanbridge 
as a place where the great visible people went in to 
work at seven a.m. and emerged out of public- 
houses at eleven P.M., or stood movelessly mournful 
in packed tramcars, or bitterly partisan on chill 
football grounds, that I could scarcely credit their 
presence here, lolling on velvet amid gold Cupids 
and Hercules, and smoking at ease, with plentiful 
ash-trays to encourage them. I glanced round to 
find acquaintances, and the first I saw was the hu- 
man being who from nine to seven was my tailor's 
assistant; not now an automaton wound up with 
deferential replies to any conceivable question that 
a dandy could put, but a living soul with a calabash 
between his teeth, as fine as anybody. Indeed, 
finer than most! He, like me, reclined aristocratic 
in the grand circle (a bob). He, like me, was of- 
fered chocolates and what not at reasonable prices 
by a boy whose dress indicated that his education 
was proceeding at Eton. I was glad to see him. 
I should have gone and spoken to him, only I feared 
that by so doing I might balefully kill a man and 
create a deferential automaton. And I was glad 
to see the vast gallery with human twopences. In 
nearly all public places of pleasure, the pleasure is 
poisoned for me by the obsession that I owe it, at 



THE HANBRIDGE EMPIRE 279 

last, to the underpaid labour of people who aren't 
there and can't be there; by the growing, deepen- 
ing obsession that the whole structure of what a re- 
spectable person means, when he says with patriotic 
warmth "England," is reared on a stupendous and 
shocking injustice. I did not feel this at the Han- 
bridge Empire. Even the newspaper-lad and the 
match-girl might go to the Hanbridge Empire and, 
sitting together, drink the milk of paradise. Won- 
derful discoverers, these new music-hall directors 
all up and down the United Kingdom ! They have 
discovered the folk. 

<•* <5* (5* «5* 

The performance was timed as carefully as a 
prize-fight. Ting! and the curtain went unfail- 
ingly up. Ting! and it came unfailingly down. 
Ting! and something started. Ting! and it 
stopped. Everybody concerned in the show knew 
what he and everybody else had to do. The illu- 
minated number-signs on either side of the prosce- 
nium changed themselves with the implacable 
accuracy of astronomical phenomena. It was as 
though some deity of ten thousand syndicated halls 
was controlling the show from some throne studded 
with electric switches in Shaftesbury Avenue. 
Only the uniformed shepherd of the twopences aloft 
seemed free to use his own discretion. His "Now 
then, order, please" a masterly union of entreaty 
and intimidation, was the sole feature of the enter- 
tainment not regulated to the fifth of a second by 
that recurrent ting. 

But what the entertainment gained in efficient 



280 PARIS NIGHTS 

exactitude by this ruthless ordering, it seemed to 
lose in zest, in capriciousness, in rude joy. It was 
watched almost dully, and certainly there was noth- 
ing in it that could rouse the wayward animal that 
is in all of us. It was marked by an impeccable 
propriety. In the classic halls of London you can 
still hear skittish grandmothers, stars of a past age 
unre formed, prattling (with an amazing imitation 
of youthfulness) of champagne suppers. But not 
in the Hanbridge Empire. At the Hanbridge Em- 
pire the curtain never rises on any disclosure of the 
carnal core of things. Even when a young woman 
in a short skirt chanted of being clasped in his arms 
again, the tepid primness of her manner indicated 
that the embrace would be that of a tailor's dummy 
and a pretty head-and-shoulders in a hairdresser's 
window. The pulse never asserted itself. Only in 
the unconscious but overpowering temperament of 
a couple of acrobatic mulatto women was there the 
least trace of bodily fever. Male acrobats of the 
highest class, whose feats were a continual creation 
of sheer animal beauty, roused no adequate en- 
thusiasm. 

"When do the Yorkshire Songsters come on?" I 
asked an attendant at the interval. In the bar, a 
handful of pleasure-seekers were dispassionately 
drinking, without a rollicking word to mar the flow 
of their secret reflections. 

"Second item in the second part," said the at- 
tendant, and added heartily: "And very good they 
are, too, sir!" 

He meant it. He would not have said as much 



THE HANBRIDGE EMPIRE 281 

of a man whom in the lounge of a London hotel I 
saw playing the fiddle and the piano simultane- 
ously. He was an attendant of mature and diffi- 
cult judgment, not to be carried away by clowning 
or grotesquerie. With him good meant good. 
And they were very good. And they were what 
they pretended to be. There were about twenty of 
them ; the women were dressed in white, and the men 
wore scarlet hunting coats. The conductor, a little 
shrewd man, was disguised in a sort of levee dress, 
with knee-breeches and silk stockings. But he 
could not disguise himself from me. I had seen 
him, and hundreds of him, in the streets of Hali- 
fax, Wakefield, and Batley. I had seen him all 
over Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire. 
He was a Midland type: infernally well satisfied 
with himself under a crust of quiet modesty; a nice 
man to chat with on the way to Blackpool, a man 
who could take a pot of beer respectably and then 
stop, who could argue ingeniously without heat, 
and who would stick a shaft into you as he left you, 
just to let you know that he was not quite so ordi- 
nary as he made out to be. They were all like that, 
in a less degree; women too; those women could 
cook a Welsh rarebit with any woman, and they 
wouldn't say all they thought all at once, either. 

And there they were ranged in a flattened semi- 
circle on a music-hall stage. Perhaps they ap- 
peared on forty music-hall stages in a year. It had 
come to that: another case of specialisation. 
Doubtless they had begun in small choirs, or in the 
parlours of home, singing for the pleasure of sing- 



282 PARIS NIGHTS 

ing, and then acquiring some local renown; and 
then the little shrewd conductor had had the grand 
idea of organised professionalism. God bless my 
soul! The thing was an epic, or ought to be! 
They really could sing. They really had voices. 
And they would not "demean" themselves to cheap- 
ness. All their eyes said: "This is no music-hall 
foolery. This is uncompromisingly high-class, and 
if you don't like it you ought to be ashamed of 
yourselves!" They sang part-song music, from 
"Sweet and Low" to a "Lohengrin" chorus. And 
with a will, with finesse, with a pianissimo over which 
the endless drone of the electric fan could be clearly 
distinguished, and a fine, free fortissimo that would 
have enchanted Wagner! They brought the house 
down every time. They might have rendered en- 
cores till midnight, but for my deity in Shaftesbury 
Avenue. It was the "folk" themselves giving back 
to the folk in the form of art the very life of the 
folk. 

*5* t?» «?* (?• 

But the most touching instances of this giving- 
back was furnished by the lady clog-dancer. Han- 
bridge used to be the centre of a land of clogs. 
Hundreds of times I have wakened in winter dark- 
ness to the sound of clogs on slushy pavements. 
And when I think of clogs I think of the knocker- 
up, and hurried fire-lighting, and tea and thick 
bread, and the icy draught from the opened front- 
door, and the factory gates, and the terrible time- 
keeper therein, and his clock: all the military harsh- 
ness of industrialism grimly accepted. Few are 




1 



■ / 



5\ / 




, 



a<- 



¥ 



THE LADY CLOG-DANCER (Paye 



THE HANBRIDGE EMPIRE 283 

the clogs now in Hanbridge. The girls wear paper 
boots, for their health's sake, and I don't know what 
the men wear. Clogs have nearly gone out of life. 
But at the Hanbridge Empire they had reappeared 
in an art highly conventionalised. The old clog- 
dancing, begun in public-houses, was realistic, and 
was done by people who the next morning would 
clatter to work in clogs. But this pretty, simpering 
girl had never worn a clog seriously. She had 
never regarded a clog as a cheap and lasting pro- 
tection against wind and rain, but as a contrivance 
that you had to dance in. I daresay she rose at 
eleven a.m. She had a Cockney accent. She 
would not let her clogs make a noise. She minced 
in clogs. It was no part of her scheme to lose her 
breath. And yet I doubt not that she constituted a 
romantic ideal for the young male twopences, with 
her clogs that had reached her natty feet from the 
original back streets of, say, Stockport. As I lum- 
bered home in the electric car, besieged by printed 
requests from the tram company not on any ac- 
count to spit, I could not help thinking and think- 
ing, in a very trite way, that art is a wonderful 
thing. 



II 

THE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE 

According to Whitaker's Almanac, there are 
something under a million of them actually at work, 
which means probably that the whole race numbers 
something over two millions. And, speaking 
broadly, no one knows anything about them. The 
most modern parents, anxious to be parental in a 
scientific manner, will explain to their children on 
the hearth the chemistry of the fire, showing how 
the coal releases again the carbon which was ab- 
sorbed by the plant in a past age, and so on, to the 
end that the children may learn to understand the 
order of the universe. 

This I have seen. But I have never seen par- 
ents explaining to their children on the hearth the 
effect of coal-getting on the family life of the col- 
lier, to the end that the children might learn to un- 
derstand the price of coal in sweat, blood, and tears. 
The householder is interested only in the other in- 
significant part of the price of coal. And this is 
odd, for the majority of householders are certainly 
not monsters of selfish and miserly indifference to 
the human factor in economics. Nor — I have con- 
vinced myself, though with difficulty — are the mem- 
bers of the House of Lords. Yet among all the 
speeches against the Miners' Eight Hours Bill in 

284 



THE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE 285 

this Chamber where beats the warm, generous heart 
of Lord Halsbury, I do not remember one which 
mentioned the real price of coal. Even the mem- 
bers of the sublime Coal Consumers' League, 
though phantoms, cannot be phantoms without 
bowels. But has the League ever issued one leaflet 
dealing with the psychology of the collier's wife as 
affected by notions of fire-damp? I doubt it. 

t7* «?• «5* (?• 

Even artists have remained unstirred by the pro- 
vocative mystery of this subterranean race, which 
perspires with a pick, not only beneath our cellars, 
but far beneath the caves of the sea itself. A work- 
ing miner, Joseph Skipsey, had to write the one 
verse about this race which has had vigour enough 
to struggle into the anthologies. The only novel 
handling in the grand manner this tremendous and 
bizarre theme is Emile Zola's "Germinal." And, 
though it is a fine novel, though it is honest and 
really impressive, there are shallows in the mighty 
stream of its narrative, and its climax is marred by 
a false sentimentality, which is none the less senti- 
mentality for being sensual. Not a great novel, 
but nearly great; as the child's ring was "nearly 
gold." And in English fiction what is there but 
"Miss Grace of All Souls," a wistful and painstak- 
ing book, with pages which extort respect, but which 
no power can save from oblivion? And in the fine 
arts, is there anything but pretty coloured sentimen- 
talities of hopeless dawns at pit-heads? Well, 
there is! Happily there are Constantin Meunier's 
sculptures of miners at work — compositions over 



286 PARIS NIGHTS 

which oblivion will have no power. But I think 
this is all. 

Journalistic reporting of great tragic events 
is certainly much better than it used to be, 
when the phraseology of the reporter was as 
rigidly fixed by convention as poetic phrase- 
ology in the eighteenth century. The spe- 
cial correspondent is now much more of an artist, 
because he is much more free. But he is handi- 
capped by the fact that when he does his special 
work really well, he is set to doing special work al- 
ways, and lives largely among abnormal and af- 
frighting phenomena, and so his sensibility is 
dulled. Moreover, there are valuable effects and 
impressions which the greatest genius on earth could 
not accomplish in a telegraph office. But did you 
ever see the lives or the swift deaths of the myste- 
rious people treated, descriptively by an imaginative 
writer in a monthly review? I noted recently with 
pleasure that the American magazines, characteris- 
tically alert, have awakened to the possibilities of 
the mysterious people as material for serious work 
in the more leisurely journalism. The last tre- 
mendous accident in the United States produced 
at any rate one careful and fairly adequate study 
of the psychology of the principal figures in it, and 
of the drama which a bundle of burning hay orig- 
inated. 

Even if I did not share the general incurious 
apathy towards the mysterious people, I should not 
blame that apathy, for it is so widespread that there 
must be some human explanation of it; my object 



THE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE 287 

is merely to point it out. But I share it. I lived 
half my life among coalpits. I never got up in the 
morning without seeing the double wheels at a 
neighbouring pit-head spin silently in opposite di- 
rections for a time, and then stop, and then begin 
again. I was accustomed to see coal and ironstone, 
not in tons, but in thousands of tons. I have been 
close to colliery disasters so enormous that the am- 
bitious local paper would make special reporters of 
the whole of its staff, and give up to the affair the 
whole of its space, save a corner for the betting 
news. My district lives half by earthenware and 
half by mining. I have often philandered with pot- 
workers, but I have never felt a genuine, active curi- 
osity about the mysterious people. I have never 
been down a coalpit, though the galleries are now 
white-washed and lighted by electricity. It has 
never occurred to me to try to write a novel about 
the real price of coal. 

«?* !?• €?* !?• 

And yet how powerfully suggestive the glimpses 
I have had! Down there, on my heath, covered 
with a shuttle-work of trams, you may get on to a 
car about four o'clock in the afternoon to pay a 
visit, and you may observe a handful of silent, for- 
midable men in the car, a greyish-yellowish-black 
from head to foot. Like Eugene Stratton, they 
are black everywhere, except the whites of their 
eyes. You ask yourself what these begrimed 
creatures that touch nothing without soiling 
it are doing abroad at four o'clock in the afternoon, 
seeing that men are not usually unyoked till six. 



288 PARIS NIGHTS 

They have an uncanny air, especially when you re- 
flect that there is not one arm among them that 
could not stretch you out with one blow. Then you 
remember that they have been buried in geological 
strata probably since five o'clock that morning, and 
that the sky must look strange to them. 

Or you may be walking in the appalling out- 
skirts, miles from town halls and free libraries, but 
miles also from flowers, and you may see a whole 
procession of these silent men, encrusted with car- 
bon and perspiration, a perfect pilgrimage of them, 
winding its way over a down where the sparse grass 
is sooty and the trees are withered. And then you 
feel that you yourself are the exotic stranger in those 
regions. But the procession absolutely ignores 
you. You might not exist. It goes on, absorbed, 
ruthless, and sinister. Your feeling is that if you 
got in its path it would tramp right over you. And 
it passes out of sight. 

Around, dotting the moors, are the mining vil- 
lages, withdrawn, self-centred, where the entire ex- 
istence of the community is regulated by a single 
steam-siren, where good fortune and ill-fortune are 
common, and where the disaster of one is the disaster 
of all. Little is known of the life of these villages 
and townlets— known, that is, by people capable of 
imaginative external sympathetic comprehension. 
And herein is probably a reason why the myste- 
rious people remain so mysterious. They live phys- 
ically separated. A large proportion of them 
never mingle with the general mass. They are not 
sufficiently seen of surface-men to maintain curi- 



THE MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE 280 

osity concerning them. They keep themselves to 
themselves, and circumstances so keep them. Only 
at elections do they seem to impinge in powerful si- 
lence on the destinies of the nation. 

I have visited some of these villages. I have 
walked over the moors to them with local preach- 
ers, and heard them challenge God. I have talked 
to doctors and magistrates about them, and 
acquired the certainty, vague and yet vivid, that in 
religion, love, work, and debauch they are equally 
violent and splendid. It needs no insight to per- 
ceive that they live nearer even than sailors to that 
central tract of emotion where life and death meet. 
But I have never sympathetically got near them. 
And I don't think I ever shall. 

Once I was talking to a man whose father, not 
himself a miner, had been the moral chieftain of one 
of these large villages, the individuality to which 
everyone turned in doubt or need. And I was 
getting this man to untap the memories of his child- 
hood. "Eh!" he said, "I remember how th' women 
used to come to my mother sometimes of a night, 
and beg, 'Mrs. B., an' ye got any old white shirts 
to spare? They're bringing 'em up, and we mun 
lay 'em out!' And I remember — " But just then 
he had to leave me, and I obtained no more. But 
what a glimpse ! 



Ill 

FIRST VOYAGE TO THE ISLE OF MAN 

It seemed solid enough. I leaned for an instant 
over the rail on the quarter away from the landing- 
stage, and there, at the foot of the high precipice 
formed by the side of the vessel, was the wavy 
water. A self-important, self-confident man 
standing near me lighted a black cigar of unseemly 
proportions, and threw the match into the water. 
The match was lost at once in the waves, which far 
below beat up futilely against the absolutely un- 
moved precipice. I had never been on such a large 
steamer before. I said to myself: "This is all 

right." 

However, that was not the moment to go into 
ecstasies over the solidity of the steamer. I had to 
secure a place for myself. Hundreds of people on 
the illimitable deck were securing places for them- 
selves. And many of them were being aided by 
porters or mariners. The number of people seemed 
to exceed the number of seats; it certainly exceeded 
the number of nice sheltered corners. I picked up 
my portmanteau with one hand and my bag 
and my sticks and my rug with the other. Then I 
dropped the portmanteau. A portmanteau has the 
peculiar property of possessing different weights. 
You pick it up in your bedroom, and it seems a 

290 



THE ISLE OF MAN 291 

feather. You say to yourself: "I can carry that 
easily — save tips to porters." But in a public 
place its weight changes for the worse with every 
yard you walk. At twenty yards it weighs half a 
ton. At forty yards no steam-crane could support 
it. You drop it. Besides, the carrying of it robs 
your movements of all grace and style. Well, I 
had carried that bag myself from the cab to the 
steamer, across the landing-stage, and up the gang- 
way. Economy! I had spent a shilling on a use- 
less magazine, and I grudged three pence to a por- 
ter with a wife and family ! I was wearing a neck- 
tie whose £>rice represented the upkeep of the porter 
and his wife and family for a full twenty-four 
hours, and yet I wouldn't employ the porter to the 
tune of threepence. Economy! These thoughts 
flashed through my head with the rapidity of light- 
ning. 

You see, I could not skip about for a deck-chair 
with that portmanteau in my hand. But if I left 
it lying on the deck, which was like a street . . . 
well, thieves, professional thieves, thieves who 
specialise in departing steamers! They nip off 
with your things while you are looking for a chair ; 
the steamer bell sounds; and there you are! 
Nevertheless, I accepted the horrid risk and left 
all my belongings in the middle of the street. 

t5* (5* £* «7* 

Not a free chair, not a red deck-chair, not a cor- 
ner ! There were seats by the rail at one extremity 
of the boat, and at the other extremity of the boat, 
but no chair to be had. Thousands of persons re- 



292 PARIS NIGHTS 

dining in chairs, and thousands of others occupied 
by bags, rugs, and bonnet-boxes, but no empty 
chair. 

"Want a deck-chair, governor?" a bearded mar- 
iner accosted me. 

Impossible to conceal from him that I did. But, 
being perhaps the ship's carpenter, was he going to 
manufacture a chair for me on the spot? I knew 
not how he did it, but in about thirty seconds he pro- 
duced a chair out of the entrails of the ship, and fixed 
it for me in a beautiful situation, just forward of 
the funnel, and close to a charming young woman, 
and a little deck-house in front for protection! It 
was exactly what I wanted ; the most stationary part 
of the entire vessel. 

Sixpence! Economy! Still, I couldn't give 
him less. Moreover, I only had two pence in cop- 
pers. 

"What will the voyage be like?" I asked him with 
false jollity, as he touched his cap. 

"Grand, sir!" he replied enthusiastically. 

Yes, and if I had given him a shilling the voyage 
would have been the most magnificent and utterly 
perfect voyage that ship ever made. 

No sooner was I comfortably installed in that 
almost horizontal deck-chair than I was aware of a 
desire to roam about, watch the casting-off and the 
behaviour of the poor stay-at-home crowd on the 
landing-stage; a very keen desire. But I would 
not risk the portmanteau again. Nothing should 
part us till the gangways were withdrawn. Absurd, 
of course! Human nature is absurd. ... I 






\ ( J (■ 






< 










THE VOYAGE (Page 292) 



THE ISLE OF MAN 293 

caught the charming young woman's eye about a 
dozen times. The ship got fuller and fuller. With 
mean and paltry joy I perceived other passengers 
seeking for chairs and not finding them, and I 
gazed at them with haughty superiority. Then a 
fiendish, an incredible, an appalling screech over my 
head made me jump in a silly way quite unworthy 
of a man who is reclining next to a charming young 
woman, and apt to prejudice him in her eyes. It 
was merely the steamer announcing that we were 
off. I sprang up, trying to make the spring seem 
part of the original jump. I looked. And lo! The 
whole landing-stage with all the people and horses 
and cabs was moving backwards, floating clean 
away ; while the enormous ship stood quite still ! A 
most singular effect! 

t5* <•* «5* J* 

In a minute we were in the middle of the river, 
and my portmanteau was safe. I left it in pos- 
session of the chair. 

The next strange phenomenon of my mental con- 
dition was an extraordinary curiosity in regard to 
the ship. I had to explore it. I had to learn all 
about it. I began counting the people on the 
deck, but soon after I had come to the man with the 
unseemly black cigar I lost count. Then I went 
downstairs. There seemed to be staircases all over 
the place. You could scarcely move without falling 
down a staircase. And I came to another deck also 
full of people and bags, and fitted with other stair- 
cases that led still lower. And on the sloping ceil- 
ing of one of these lower staircases I saw the Board 



294 PARIS NIGHTS 

of Trade certificate of the ship. A most interesting 
document. It gave the tonnage as 2,000, and the 
legal number of passengers as about the same; and 
it said there were over two thousand life-belts on 
board, and room on the eight boats for I don't re- 
member how many shipwrecked voyagers. It even 
gave the captain's Christian name. You might 
think that this would slake my curiosity. But, no! 
It urged me on. Lower down — somewhere near 
the caverns at the bottom of the sea, I came across 
marble halls, upholstered in velvet, where at snowy 
tables people were unconcernedly eating steaks and 
drinking tea. I said to myself "At such and such 
an hour I will come down here and have tea. It 
will break the monotony of the voyage." Looking 
through the little round windows of the restaurant 
I saw strips of flying green. 

Then I thought: "The engines!" And somehow 
the word "reciprocating" came into my mind. I 
really must go and see the engines reciprocate. I 
had never seen anything reciprocate, except possibly 
my Aunt Hilda at the New Year, when she an- 
swered my letter of good wishes. I discovered that 
many other persons had been drawn down towards 
the engine-room by the attraction of the spectacle 
of reciprocity. And as a spectacle it was assuredly 
majestic, overwhelming, and odorous. I must 
learn the exact number of times those engines recip- 
rocated in a minute, and I took out my watch for 
the purpose. Other gazers at once did the same. 
It seemed to be a matter of the highest impor- 
tance that we should know the precise speed of those 



THE ISLE OF MAN 295 

engines. Then I espied a large brass plate which 
appeared to have been affixed to the engine 
room in order to inform the engineers that the ship 
was built by Messrs. Macconochie and Sons, of 
Dumbarton. Why Dumbarton? Why not 
Halifax? And why must this precious in- 
formation always be staring the engineers in 
the face? I wondered whether "Sons" were 
married, and, if so, what the relations were be- 
tween Sons' wives and old Mrs. Macconochie. 
Then, far down, impossibly far down, furlongs be- 
neath those gesticulating steely arms, I saw a coal- 
pit on fire and demons therein with shovels. And 
all of a sudden it occurred to me that I might as 
well climb up again to my own special deck. 

t?* (?• *•* t?» 

I did so. The wind blew my hat off, my hat ran 
half-way up the street before I could catch it. I 
caught it and clung to the rail. We were just pass- 
ing a lightship ; the land was vague behind ; in front 
there was nothing but wisps of smoke here and 
there. Then I saw a fishing-smack, tossing like 
anything ; its bows went down into the sea and then 
jerked themselves fairly out of the sea, and this 
process went on and on and on. And although I was 
not aboard the smack, it disconcerted me. How- 
ever, I said to myself, "How glad I am to be on a 
nice firm steamer, instead of on that smack!" I 
looked at my watch again. We seemed to have 
been away from England about seven days, but it 
was barely three-quarters of an hour. The offen- 
sive man with the cigar went swaggering by. And 



296 PARIS NIGHTS 

then a steward came up out of the depths of the 
sea with a tray full of glasses of beer, and a group 
of men lolling in deck chairs started to drink this 
beer. I cared not for the sight. I said to myself, 
"I will go and sit down." And as I stepped for- 
ward the deck seemed to sink away ever so slightly. 
A trifle! Perhaps a delusion on my part! Surely 
nothing so solid as that high road of a deck could 
sink away! Having removed my portmanteau 
from my chair, I sat down. The charming girl was 
very pale, with eyes closed. Possibly asleep! 
Many people had the air of being asleep. Every 
chair was now occupied. Still, dozens of boastful 
persons were walking to and fro, pretending to have 
the easy sea-legs of Lord Charles Beresford. The 
man with the atrocious cigar (that is, another atro- 
cious cigar) swung by. Hateful individual ! "You 
wait a bit!" I said to him (in my mind). "You'll 
see!" 

I, too, shut my eyes, keeping very still. A grand 
voyage ! Certainly, a grand voyage ! Then I woke 
up. I had been asleep. It was tea-time. But I 
would not have descended to that marble restaurant 
for ten thousand pounds. For the first time I was 
indifferent to tea in the afternoon. However, af- 
ter another quarter of an hour, I had an access of 
courage. I rose. I walked to the rail. The hori- 
zon was behaving improperly. I saw that I had 
made a mistake. But I dared not move. To move 
would have been death. I clung to the rail. There 
was my chair five yards off, but as inaccessible as 
if it had been five miles off. Years passed. Pale 



THE ISLE OF MAN 297 

I must have been, but I retained my dignity. More 
years rolled by. Then, by accident, I saw what re- 
sembled a little cloud on the horizon. 

It was the island! The mere sight of the island 
gave me hope and strength, and cheek. 

In half an hour — you will never guess it — I was 
lighting a cigarette, partly for the benefit of the 
charming young woman, and partly to show that 
offensive man with the cigars that he was not the 
Shah of Persia. He had not suffered. Confound 
him! 



IV 

THE ISLAND BOARDING-HOUSE 

When you first take up your brief residence in 
the private hotel, as they term it — though I believe 
it is still called boarding-house in the plain-spoken 
island — your attitude towards your fellow-guests 
is perfectly clear; I mean your secret attitude, of 
course. Your secret attitude is that you have got 
among a queer and an unsympathetic set of people. 
At the first meal — especially if it be breakfast — 
you glance at them all one by one out of the cor- 
ners of your eyes, and in that shrewd way of yours 
you add them up (being a more than average ex- 
perienced judge of human nature), and you come 
to the conclusion that you have seldom, if ever, en- 
countered such a series of stupid and harsh faces. 
The men seem heavy, if not greedy, and sunk in 
mental sloth. And, really, the women might have 
striven a little harder to avoid resembling guys. 
After all, it is the duty of educated people not to 
offend the gaze of their fellow-creatures. And as 
for eating, do these men, in fact, live for naught but 
eating? Here are perhaps fifty or sixty immortal 
souls, and their unique concern, their united con- 
cern, seems to be the gross satisfaction of the body. 
Perhaps they do not have enough to eat at home, 
you reflect ironically. And you also reflect that 

298 







THE ISLAND BOARDING HOUSE (Paje 22S) 



THE BOARDING-HOUSE 299 

some people, when they have contracted for bed and 
full board at so much per day, become absolutely 
lost to all sense of scruple, all sense of what is nice, 
and would, if they could, eat the unfortunate land- 
lord right into the bankruptcy court. Look at 
that man there, near the window — doubtless, he ob- 
tained his excellent place near the window by the 
simple, colonizing method of grabbing it — well, he 
has already apportioned to himself four Manx her- 
rings, and now, with his mouth full, he is mumbling 
about eggs and flesh meat. 

And then their conversation! How dull! — how 
lacking in point, in originality! These unhappy 
people appear to have in their heads no ideas that 
are not either trivial, tedious, or merely absurd. 
They do not appear to be interested in any matters 
that could interest a reasonable man. They babble, 
saying over and over again the same things. Or if 
they do not babble they giggle, or they may do 
both, which is worse; and, indeed, the uproarious 
way in which some of them laugh, upon no sufficient 
provocation, is disagreeable, especially in a woman. 
Or, if they neither babble, giggle, nor deafen the 
room with their outrageous mirth, they sit glum, 
speaking not a word, glowering upon humanity. 
How English that is — and how rude! 

Commonplace — that is what these people are! It 
is not their fault, but it is nevertheless a pity; and 
you resent it. Indubitably you are not in a sym- 
pathetic environment; you are not among kindred 
spirits. You grow haughty, within. When two 
late comers enter breezily and take seats near to 



300 PARIS NIGHTS 

you, and one of them begins at once by remarking 
that he is going to Port Erin for the day, and asks 
you if you know Port Erin, you reply "No"; the 
fact being that you have visited Port Erin, but the 
fact also being that you shirk the prospect of a sus- 
tained conversation with any of these too common- 
place, uncomprehending strangers. 

You rise and depart from the table, and you en- 
deavour to make your exit as majestic as possible; 
but there is a suspicion in your mind that your exit 
is only sheepish. 

You meet someone on the stairs, a woman less 
like a guy than those you have seen, and still youth- 
ful. As you are going upstairs and she is coming 
down, and the two of you are staying in the same 
house, you wonder whether it would not be well to 
greet her. A simple "Good-morning." You 
argue about this in your head for some ten years — 
it is only in reality three seconds, but it seems eter- 
nal. You feel it would be nice to say good-morn- 
ing to her. But at the critical point, at the psycho- 
logical moment, a hard feeling comes into your 
heart, and a glazed blind look into your eyes, and 
you glance away. You perceive that she is staring 
straight in front of her; you perceive that she is 
deliberately cutting you. And so the two of you 
pass like ships in the night, and yet not quite like 
ships in the night, because ships do not hate, de- 
test, and despise. 

You go out into the sunshine (if sunshine there 
happens to be), between the plash of the waves 
and the call of the boatman on the right hand, and 



T\ 7 




YOU MEET SOME ONE ON THE STAIRS {Page 300] 



THE BOARDING-HOUSE 301 

the front doors of all the other boarding-houses on 
the left, and you see that the other boarding-houses 
are frequented by a much superior, smarter, more 
intelligent, better-mannered set of pleasure-seek- 
ers than yours. You feel by a sure premonition that 
you are in for a dull time. 

iT* «5% J* t5» 

Nothing occurs for about forty-eight terrible 
hours, during which time, with the most strict pro- 
priety, you behave as though the other people in the 
boarding-house did not exist. On several occasions 
you have meant to exchange a few words with this 
individual or that, but this individual or that has not 
been encouraging, has made no advance. And you 
are the last person to risk a rebuff. You are sen- 
sitive, like all fine minds, to a degree which this 
coarse clay in the boarding-house cannot conceive. 

Then one afternoon something occurs. It usu- 
ally does occur in the afternoon. You are in the 
tram-car. About ten others are in the tram-car. 
And among them you notice the man who put a 
pistol to your head at the first meal and asked you 
if you knew Port Erin ; also the young woman who 
so arrogantly pretended that she did not see you on 
the stairs. They are together. You had an idea 
they were together in the boarding-house; but you 
were not sure, because they seldom arrived in the 
dining-room together, or left it together, and both 
of them did a great deal of talking to other people. 
Of course, you might have asked, but the matter did 
not interest you; besides, you hate to seem inquisi- 
tive. He is considerably older than she is; a hale, 



302 PARIS NIGHTS 

jolly, red-faced, grey bearded man, who probably 
finds it easier to catch sight of his watch-chain than 
of his toes. She is slim, and a little arch. If she is 
his wife the difference between their ages is really 
excessive. 

The car in its passage gradually empties until 
there is nobody in it save you and the conductor on 
the platform and these two inside. And a minute 
before it reaches the end of its journey the man 
opens his cigar-case, and preparing a cigar for the 
sacrificial burning, strolls along the car to the plat- 
form. 

"We're the last on the car," he says, between two 
puffs, and not very articulately. 

"Yes," you say. It is indubitable that you are 
the last on the car. You needed nobody to tell you 
that. Still, the information gives you pleasure, 
and the fellow is rather jolly. So you add, ami- 
ably, "I suppose it's these electric motors that are 
giving the tram-cars beans." 

He laughs. He evidently thinks you have ex- 
pressed yourself in an amusing manner. 

And inspecting the scarlet end of his cigar, he 
says in a low voice: "I hope you're right. I've just 
bought a packet of shares in that motor com- 
pany." 

"Really!" you exclaim. So he is a shareholder, 
a member of the investing public! You are im- 
pressed. Instantly you imagine him as a very 
wealthy man who knows how to look after his 
money, and who has a hawk's eye for "a good 
thing." You wish you had loose money that would 



THE BOARDING-HOUSE 303 

enable you to pick up a casual "packet of shares" 
here and there. 

The car stops. The lady gets out. You raise 
your hat; it is the least you can do. Instead of 
pretending that you are empty air, she smiles on 
you charmingly, almost anxiously polite (perhaps 
she wants to make up for having cut you on the 
stairs), and offers you some remark about the 
weather, a banal remark, but so prettily enveloped 
in tissue paper and tied with pink ribbon, that you 
treasure it. 

Your common home is only fifty yards off. Ob- 
viously you must reach it in company. 

"My daughter here — " the grey-bearded man be- 
gins a remark. 

So she is his daughter. Rather interesting. 
You talk freely, exposing all the most agreeable 
and polite side of your disposition. 

«?• (5* (5* i3% 

While preparing for dinner you reflect with sat- 
isfaction and joy that at last you are on friendly 
terms with somebody in the house. You anticipate 
the dinner with eagerness. You regard the father 
and daughter somewhat as palm trees in the desert. 
During dinner you talk to them a great deal, and 
insensibly you find yourself exchanging remarks 
with other guests. 

They are not so bad as they seemed, perhaps. 
Anyhow, one ought to make the best of things. 

«?■ t5* i?* t?* 

A whisky that night with the father! In the 
course of the whisky you contrive to let him gather 



304 PARIS NIGHTS 

that you, too, keep an eye on the share-market, and 
that you have travelled a great deal. In another 
twenty- four hours you are perfectly at home in the 
boarding-house, greeting people all over the place, 
and even stopping on the stairs to converse. 
Rather a jolly house! Really, some very decent 
people here, indeed! Of course there are also some 
with whom the ice is never broken. To the end you 
and they glaringly and fiercely pretend to be blind 
when you meet. You reconcile yourself to this; 
you harden yourself. As for new-comers, you wish 
they would not be so stiff and so absurdly aristo- 
cratic. You take pity on them, poor things ! 

But father and daughter remain your chief 
stand-by. They overstay you (certainly unlimited 
wealth), and they actually have the delightful idea 
of seeing you off at the station. You part on terms 
that are effusive. You feel you have made friends 
for life — and first-class friends. You are to meet 
them again; you have sworn it. 

By the time you get home you have forgotten 
all about them. 



TEN HOURS AT BLACKPOOL 

Manchester is a right place to start from. And 
the vastness of Victoria Station— more like Lon- 
don than any other phenomenon in Manchester — 
with its score of platforms, and its subways ro- 
mantically lighted by red lamps and beckoning pale 
hands, and its crowds eternally surging up and 
down granitic flights of stairs— the vastness of this 
roaring spot prepares you better than anything else 
could for the dimensions and the loudness of your 
destination. The Blackpool excursionists fill the 
twelfth platform from end to end, waiting with 
bags and baskets: a multitude of well-marked types, 
some of the men rather violently smart as to their 
socks and neckties, but for the most part showing 
that defiant disregard of appearances which is per- 
haps the worst trait of the Midland character. The 
women seem particularly unattractive in their mack- 
intoshed blousiness— so much so that the mere con- 
tinuance of the race is a proof that they must pos- 
sess secret qualities which render them irresistible; 
they evidently consult their oculists to the neglect of 
their dentists: which is singular, and would be dan- 
gerous to the social success of any other type of 
woman. 

"I never did see such a coal-cellar, not in all my 

365 



306 PARIS NIGHTS 

days!" exclaims one lady, apparently outraged by 
sights seen in house-hunting. 

And a middle-aged tradesman (or possibly he 
was an insurance agent) remarks: "What I say is 
— the man who doesn't appreciate sterling generos- 
ity — is no man !" 

Such fragments of conversation illustrate the 
fine out-and-out idiosyncrasy of the Midlands. 

The train comes forward like a victim, and in an 
instant is captured, and in another instant is gone, 
leaving an empty platform. These people ruth- 
lessly know what they want. And for miles and 
many miles the train skims over canals, and tram- 
cars, and yards, and back-streets, and at intervals 
you glimpse a young woman with her hair in pins 
kneeling in sack-cloth to wash a grimy doorstep. 
And you feel convinced that in an hour or two, 
when she has "done," that young woman, too, will 
be in Blackpool ; or, if not she, at any rate her sister. 

t5* (7» (5* t5* 

The station of arrival is enormous; and it is as 
though all the passenger rolling-stock of the entire 
country had had an important rendezvous there. 
And there are about three cabs. This is not the 
town of cabs. On every horizon you see floating 
terrific tramcars which seat ninety people and which 
ought to be baptised Lusitania and Baltic. 
You wander with your fellow men down a long 
street of cookshops with calligraphic and unde- 
cipherable menus, and at every shopdoor is a loud- 
tongued man to persuade you that his is the gate 
of paradise and the entrance to the finest shilling 



BLACKPOOL 307 

dinner in Blackpool. But you have not the cour- 
age of his convictions; though you would like to 
partake of the finest shilling dinner, you dare not, 
with your southern stomach in rebellion against you. 
You slip miserably into the Hotel Majestic, and 
glide through many Lincrusta- Walton passages to 
an immense, empty smoking-room, where there is 
one barmaid and one waiter. You dare not even 
face the bar. ... In the end the waiter 
chooses your aperitif for you, and you might be in 
London. The waiter, agreeably embittered by ex- 
istence, tells you all about everything. 

"This hotel used to be smaller," he says. "A 
hundred and twenty. A nice select party, you 
know. Now it's all changed. Our better-class 
clients have taken houses at St. Anne's. . . 
Jews! I should say so! Two hundred and fifty 
out of three hundred in August. Some of 'em all 
right, of course, but they try to own the place. 
They come in for tea, or it may be a small ginger 
with plenty of lemon and ice, and when they've had 
that they've had their principal drink for the day. 
. . . The lift is altered from hydraulic to elec- 
tricity . . . years ago . . ." 

Meanwhile a client who obviously knows his way 
about has taken possession of the bar and the bar- 
maid. 

"I've changed my frock, you see," says she. 
"Changed it down here?" he demands. 
"Yes. Well, I've been ironing . . . Oh! 
You monkey!" 

In a mirror you catch her delicately chucking 



308 PARIS NIGHTS 

him under the chin. And, feeling that this kind of 
tiling is not special to Blackpool, that it in fact 
might happen anywhere, you decide that it is time 
to lunch and leave the oasis of the Majestic and con- 
front Blackpool once more. 

*?* (5* «5* (?• 

The Fair Ground is several miles off, and on the 
way are three piers, loaded with toothless young 
women flirting, and with middle-aged women dili- 
gently crocheting or knitting. Millions of stitches 
must be accomplished to every waltz that the bands 
play; and perhaps every second a sock is finished. 
But you may not linger on any pier. There is the 
longest sea-promenade in Europe to be stepped. 
As you leave the shopping quarter and undertake 
the vista of ten thousand boarding-house windows 
(in each of which is a white table full of knives and 
forks and sauce-bottles) you are enheartened by a 
banneret curving in the breeze with these words: 
"Flor de Higginbotham. The cigar that you come 
back for. 2d." You know that you will, indeed, 
come back for it. . . . At last, footsore, amid 
a maze of gliding trams, your vision dizzy with the 
passing and re-passing of trams, you arrive at the 
Fair Ground. And the first thing you see is a 
woman knitting on a campstool as she guards the 
booth of a spiritualistic medium. The next is a 
procession of people each carrying a doormat and 
climbing up the central staircase of a huge light- 
house, and another procession of people, each sit- 
ting on a doormat and sliding down a corkscrew 
shoot that encircles the lighthouse. Why a light- 



BLACKPOOL 309 

House? A gigantic simulation of a bottle of Bass 
would have been better. 

The scenic railway and the switchback surpass all 
previous dimensions in their kind. Some other 
method of locomotion is described as "half a mile of 
jolly fun." And the bowl-slide is "a riot of joy." 
"Joy" is the key-word of the Fair Ground. You 
travel on planks over loose, unkempt sand, and un- 
der tethered circling Maxim aeroplanes, from one 
joy to the next. In the House of Nonsense, "joy 
reigns supreme." Giggling also reigns supreme. 
The "human spider," with a young woman's face, 
is a source of joy, and guaranteed by a stentorian 
sailor to be alive. Another genuine source of joy 
is " 'Dante's Inferno' up to date." Another enor- 
mous booth, made mysterious, is announced as "the 
home of superior enjoyments." Near by is the 
abode of the two-headed giant, as to whom it is 
shouted upon oath that "he had a brother which 
lived to the height of twelve foot seven." Then 
you come to the destructive section, offering joy 
still more vivid. Here by kicking a football you 
may destroy images of your fellow men. Or — ex- 
quisitely democratic invention — you can throw 
deadly missiles at life-sized dolls that fly round and 
round in life-sized motor-cars: genius is, in fact, 
abroad on the Fair Ground. 

All this is nothing compared to the joy- wheel, 
certainly the sublimest device for getting money 
and giving value for it that a student of human na- 
ture ever hit upon. You pay threepence for ad- 
mittance into the booth of the joy- wheel, and upon 



310 PARIS NIGHTS 

entering you are specially informed that you need 
not practise the joy- wheel unless you like; it is your 
privilege to sit and watch. Having sat down, there 
is no reason why you should ever get up again, so 
diverting is the spectacle of a crowd of young men 
and boys clinging to each other on a large revolving 
floor and endeavouring to defjr the centrifugal 
force. Every time a youth is flung against the 
cushions at the side you grin, and if a thousand 
youths were thrown off, your thousandth grin 
would be as hearty as the first. The secret thought 
of every spectator is that a mixture of men and 
maidens would be even more amusing. A bell 
rings, and the floor is cleared, and you anticipate 
hopefully, but the word is for children only, and 
you are somewhat dashed, though still inordinately 
amused. Then another bell, and you hope again, 
and the word is for ladies only. The ladies rush 
on to the floor with a fearful alacrity, and are flung 
rudely off it by an unrespecting centrifugal force 
(which alone the attendant, acrobatic and stately, 
can dominate) ; they slide away in all postures, head 
over heels, shrieking, but the angel of decency seems 
to watch over their skirts. . . . And at length 
the word is for ladies and gentlemen together, and 
the onslaught is frantic. The ladies and gentle- 
men, to the number of a score or so, clutch at each 
other, making a bouquet of trousers and petticoats 
in the centre of the floor. The revolutions com- 
mence, and gain in rapidity, and couple after cou- 
ple is shot off, yelling, to the periphery. They en- 
joy it. Oh! They enjoy it! The ladies, aban- 



BLACKPOOL 311 

doning themselves to dynamic law, slither away 
with closed eyes and muscles relaxed in a voluptu- 
ous languor. And then the attendant, braving the 
peril of the wheel, leaps to the middle, and taking 
a lady in his arms, exhibits to the swains how it is 
possible to keep oneself in the centre and keep one's 
damsel there too. And then, with a bow, he hands 
the lady back to her lawful possessor. Nothing 
could be more English, or more agreeable, than the 
curious contradiction of frank abandonment and 
chaste simplicity which characterises this extraordi- 
nary exhibition. It is a perfect revelation of the 
Anglo-Saxon temperament, and would absolutely 
baffle any one of Latin race. . . . You leave 
here because you must ; you tear yourself away and 
return to the limitless beach, where the sea is going 
nonchalantly about its business just as if human 
progress had not got as far as the joy- wheel. 

(5* (?• c7* <5* 

After you have gone back for the cigar, and 
faced the question of the man on the kerb, "Who 
says Blackpool rock?" and eaten high tea in a res- 
taurant more gilded than the Trocadero, and vis- 
ited the menagerie, and ascended to the top of the 
Tower in order to be badgered by rather nice girl- 
touts with a living to make and a powerful determi- 
nation to make it, and seen the blue turn to deep 
purple over the sea, you reach at length the danc- 
ing-halls, which are the justification of Blackpool's 
existence. Blackpool is an ugly town, mean in 
its vastness, but its dancing-halls present a beautiful 
spectacle. You push your way up crowded stairs 



312 PARIS NIGHTS 

into crowded galleries, where the attendants are 
persuasive as with children — "Please don't smoke 
here" — and you see the throng from Victoria Sta- 
tion and a thousand other stations in its evening 
glory of drooping millinery and fragile blouses, 
though toothless as ever. You see it in a palatial 
and enormous setting of crystal and gold under a 
ceiling like the firmament. And you struggle to 
the edge and look over, and see, beneath, the glit- 
tering floor covered with couples in a strange array 
of straw hats and caps, and knickers, and tennis 
shoes, and scarcely a glove among the five hundred 
of them. Only the serio-comic M.C., with a deli- 
cately waved wand, conforms to the fashion of 
London. He has his hands full, has that M.C., as 
he trips to and fro, calling, with a curious stress 
and pause: "One — more couple please! One — 
more couple please I" And then the music pulsates 
— does really pulsate — and releases the multitude. 
. . . It is a sight to stir emotion. The waltz is 
even better. And then beings perched in the lofti- 
est corners of the roof shoot coloured rays upon the 
floor, and paper snow begins to fall, and confetti to 
fly about, and eyes to soften and allure. . . . 
And all around are subsidiary halls, equally re- 
splendent, where people are drinking, or lounging, 
or flirting, or gloating over acrobats, monkeys and 
ballerinas. The tiger roars, the fountain tin- 
kles, the corks go pop, the air is alive with music 
and giggling, the photographer cries his invitation, 
and everywhere there is the patter of animated feet 
and the contagion of a barbaric and honest gaiety. 



BLACKPOOL 313 

Brains and imagination are behind this colossal phe- 
nomenon. For sixpence you can form part of it; 
for sixpence you can have delight, if you are young 
and simple and lusty enough. This is the huge 
flower that springs from the horrid bed of the factory 
system. Human creatures are half-timers for this ; 
they are knocked up at 5.30 a.m. in winter for this; 
they go on strike for this; they endure for eleven 
months and three weeks for this. They all earn 
their living by hard and repulsive work, and here 
they are in splendour! They will work hard at joy 
till they drop from exhaustion. You can see men 
and women fast asleep on the plush, supporting 
each other's heads in the attitudes of affection. 
The railway stations and the night-trains are wait- 
ing for these. 



THE BRITISH HOME— 1908 



AN EVENING AT THE SMITHS 

Mr. Smith returns to his home of an evening 
at 6:30. Mr. Smith's home is in a fairly long 
street, containing some dozens of homes exactly 
like Mr. Smith's. It has a drawing-room and a 
dining-room, two or three bedrooms, and one or 
two attics, also a narrow hall (with stained glass 
in the front door) , a kitchen, a bathroom, a front 
garden, and a back garden. It has a service of 
gas and of water, and excellent drains. The 
kitchen range incidentally heats the water for the 
bathroom, so that the bath water is hottest at about 
noon on Sundays, when nobody wants it, and cold- 
est first thing in the morning, and last thing at 
night, when everybody wants it. (This is a de- 
tail. The fact remains that when hot water is 
really required it can always be had by cooking a 
joint of beef.) 

The house and its two gardens are absolutely 
private. The front garden is made private by iron 
rails; its sole purposes are to withdraw the house 
a little from the road and to enable the servant 
to fill up her spare time by washing tiles. The 
back garden is made private by match-boarding. 
The house itself is made private by a mysterious 
substance unsurpassed as a conductor of sound. 

S17 



318 PARIS NIGHTS 

Mr. Smith's home is adequately furnished. 
There may; be two beds in a room, but each person 
has a bed. Carpets are everywhere; easy chairs 
and a sofa do not lack; linen is sufficient; crockery 
is plenteous. As for cutlery, Mr. Smith belongs 
to the only race in the world which allows itself 
a fresh knife and fork to each course of a meal. 
The drawing-room is the best apartment and the 
least used. It has a piano, but, as the drawing- 
room fire is not a constant phenomenon, pianists 
can only practise with regularity and comfort dur- 
ing four months of the year — hence, perhaps, a 
certain mediocrity of performance. 

Mr. Smith sits down to tea in the dining-room. 
According to fashionable newspapers, tea as a 
square meal has quite expired in England. On 
six days a week, however, tea still constitutes the 
chief repast in about 99 per cent, of English 
homes. At the table are Mrs. Smith and three 
children — John, aged 25; Mary, aged 22; and 
Harry, aged 15. For I must inform you that 
Mr. Smith is 50, and his wife is very near 50. 
Mr. Smith gazes round at his home, his wife, and 
his children. He has been at work in the world 
for 34 years, and this spectacle is what he has to 
show for his labour. It is his reward. It is the 
supreme result. He hurries through his breakfast, 
and spends seven industrious hours at the works 
in order that he may have tea nicely with his own 
family in his own home of a night. 

Well, the food is wholesome and sufficient, and 
they are all neat and honest, and healthy — except 



AN EVENING AT SMITHS' 319 

Mrs. Smith, whose health is not what it ought to 
be. Mr. Smith conceals his pride in his children, 
but the pride is there. Impossible that he should 
not be proud! He has the right to be proud. 
John is a personable young man, earning more 
and more every year. Mary is charming in her 
pleasant blouse, and Harry is getting enormous, 
and will soon be leaving school. 

£ Si £ g 

This tea, which is the daily blossoming-time of 
the home that Mr. Smith and his wife have con- 
structed with 26 years' continual effort, ought to 
be a very agreeable affair. Surely the materials 
for pleasure are present! But it does not seem to 
be a very agreeable meal. There is no regular 
conversation. Everybody has the air of being pre- 
occupied with his own affairs. A long stretch of 
silence; then some chaffing or sardonic remark by 
one child to another; then another silence; then 
a monosyllable from Mr. Smith; then another 
silence. 

No subject of wide interest is ever seriously ar- 
gued at that table. No discussion is ever under- 
taken for the sake of discussion. It has never 
occurred to anyone named Smith that conversa- 
tion in general is an art and may be a diverting 
pastime, and that conversation at table is a duty. 
Besides, conversation is nourished on books, and 
books are rarer than teaspoons in that home. Fur- 
ther, at back of the excellent, honest, and clean 
mind of every Smith is the notion that politeness 
is something that one owes only to strangers. 



320 PARIS NIGHTS 

When tea is over — and it is soon over — young 
John Smith silently departs to another home, very 
like his own, in the next street but one. In that 
other home is a girl whom John sincerely considers 
to be the pearl of womanhood. In a few months 
John, inspired and aided by this pearl, will em- 
bark in business for himself as constructor of a 
home. 

Mary Smith wanders silently and inconspicu- 
ously into the drawing-room (it being, as you 
know summer) and caresses the piano in an ex- 
pectant manner. John's views as to the identity 
of the pearl of womanhood are not shared by an- 
other young man who lives not very far off. This 
other young man has no doubt whatever that the 
pearl of womanhood is precisely Mary Smith (an 
idea which had never entered John's head) ; and 
he comes to see Mary every night, with the per- 
mission of her parents. The pair are, in fact, 
engaged. Probably Mary opens the door for him, 
in which case they go straight to the drawing-room. 
(One is glad to think that, after all, the drawing- 
room is turning out useful.) Young Henry has 
disappeared from human ken. 

(5* «?* «?* €•* 

Mr. Smith and wife remain in the dining-room, 
separated from each other by a newspaper, which 
Mr. Smith is ostensibly reading. I say "osten- 
sibly," for what Mr. Smith is really reading on the 
page of the newspaper is this: "I shall have to 
give something to John, something pretty hand- 
some. Of course, there's no question of a dowry 



AN EVENING AT SMITHS' 321 

with Mary, but I shall have to give something hand- 
some to her, too. And weddings cost money. 
And I have no savings, except my insurance." He 
keeps on reading this in every column. It is true. 
He is still worried about money, as he was 26 years 
ago. He has lived hard and honourably, ever at 
strain, and never had a moment's true peace of 
mind: once it was the fear of losing his situation; 
now it is the fear of his business going wrong; 
always it has been the tendency of expenditure to 
increase. The fruit of his ancient immense desire 
to have Mrs. Smith is now ripe for falling. The 
home which he and she have built is finished now, 
and is to be disintegrated. And John and Mary 
are about to begin again what their parents once 
began. I can almost hear Mr. Smith plaintively 
asking the newspaper, as he thinks over the 
achieved enterprise of his home: Has it been a suc- 
cess? Is it a success? 



II 

THE GREAT MANNERS QUESTION 

Let us forget that it is a home. Let us con- 
ceive it as a small collection of people living in 
the same house. They are together by accident 
rather than by design, and they remain together 
rather by inertia than by the fitness of things. 
Supposing that the adult occupants of the average 
house had to begin domestic life again (I do not 
speak of husbands and wives) , and were effectively 
free to choose their companions, it is highlj r im- 
probable that they would choose the particular 
crew of which they form part ; it is practically cer- 
tain that they would not choose it in its entirety. 
However, there they are, together, every day, 
every night, on a space of ground not perhaps more 
than twenty feet by twenty feet — often less. To 
find room to separate a little they live in layers, 
and it is the servant who is nearest heaven. That 
is how you must look at them. 

Now it is, broadly speaking, a universal char- 
acteristic of this strange community that the mem- 
bers of it can depend upon each other in a crisis. 
They are what is called ''loyal" to an extraordinary 
degree. Let one of them fall ill, and he can ab- 
solutely rely on tireless nursing. 

Again, let one of them get into trouble, and his 

322 



THE MANNERS QUESTION 323 

companions will stand by him, and if they cannot, 
or will not, help him materially, they will, at any 
rate, make sympathetic excuses for not doing so. 
Or let one of them suffer a loss, and he will in- 
stantly be surrounded by all the consolations that 
kindness can invent. Or let one of them be ill- 
spoken of, and every individual of the community 
will defend him, usually with heat, always with 
conviction. 

£ £ $ $ 

But I have drawn only the foul-weather picture. 
We come to the fine-weather picture. Imagine a 
stranger from the moon, to whom I had quite truth- 
fully described the great qualities of this strange 
community presided over by Mr. Smith— imagine 
him invisibly introduced into the said community! 

You can fancy the lunatic's astonishment! In- 
stead of heaven he would decidedly consider that 
he had strayed into an armed camp, or into a cage 
of porcupines. He would conclude, being a lun- 
atic, that the members of the community either 
hated each other, or at best suffered the sight of 
each other only as a supreme act of toleration. 
He would hear surly voices, curt demands, impo- 
lite answers; and if he did not hear amazing silences 
it would be because you cannot physically hear a 
silence. 

He would no doubt think that the truth was not 
in me. He would remonstrate: "But you told 
me—" 

Then I should justify myself: " 'In a crisis,' I 
said, my dear gentleman from the moon. I said 



324 PARIS NIGHTS 

nothing about ordinary daily life. Now you see 
this well-favoured girl who has been nagging at 
her brother all through tea because of some omis- 
sion or commission — I can assure you that if, for 
instance, her brother had typhoid fever that girl 
would nurse him with the devotion of a saint. 
Similarly, if she lost her sweetheart by death or 
breach of promise, he would envelope her in 
brotherly affection." 

"How often does he have typhoid fever?" the 
lunatic might ask. "Once a month?" 

"Well," I should answer, "he hasn't had it yet. 
But if he had it — you see!" 

"And does she frequently get thrown over?" 

"Oh, no! Her young man worships her. She 
is to be married next spring. Btit if — " 

"And so, while waiting for crises and disasters, 
they go on — like this?" 

"Yes," I should defend my fellow- terrestrials. 
"But you must not jump to the conclusion that 
they are always like this. They can be just as 
nice as anybody. They are perfectly charming, 
really." 

"Well, then," he might inquire, "how do they 
justify this behaviour to one another?" 

"By the hazard of birth," I should reply, "or by 
the equally great hazard of marriage. With us, 
when you happen to have the same father and 
mother, or even the same uncle, or when you hap- 
pen to be married, it is generally considered that 
you may abandon the forms of politeness and the 



THE MANNERS QUESTION 325 

expressions of sympathy, and that you have an un- 
limited right of criticism." 

"I should have thought precisely the contrary," 
he would probably say, being a lunatic. 

The lunatic having been allowed to depart, I 
should like to ask the Smiths — middle-aged Mr. 
Smith and Mrs. Smith — a question somewhat in 
these terms: "What is the uppermost, the most 
frequent feeling in your minds about this com- 
munity which 5 r ou call 'home'? You needn't tell 
me that you love it, that it is the dearest place on 
earth, that no other place could ever have quite 
the same, etc., etc. I know all about that. I ad- 
mit it. Is not your uppermost, commonest feel- 
ing a feeling that it is rather a tedious, tiresome 
place, and that the human components of it are 
excellent persons, but . . . and that really 
you have had a great deal to put up with?" 

In reply, do not be sentimental, be hon- 
est. . . . 

Such being your impression of home (not your 
deepest, but your most obvious impression), can 
it fairly be stated that the home of the Smiths is 
a success? 

«5* e5* £* *3* 

There are two traits which have prevented the 
home of the Smiths from being a complete suc- 
cess, from being that success which both Mr. and 
Mrs. Smith fully intended to achieve when they 
started, and which young John and young Mary 
fully intend to achieve when they at length start 



326 PARIS NIGHTS 

without having decided precisely how they will do 
better than their elders. The first is British inde- 
pendence of action, which causes the owner of a 
Britsh temperament to seek to combine the ad- 
vantages of anarchical solitude with the advantages 
of a community: impossible feat! In the home of 
the Smiths each room is a separate Norman for- 
tress, sheltering an individuality that will be un- 
trammelled or perish. 

And the second is the unchangeable conviction 
at the bottom of every Briton's heart that formal 
politeness in intimacy is insincere. This is espe- 
cially true of the Midlands and the North. When 
I left the Midlands and went South, I truly 
thought, for several days, that Southerners were 
a hypocritical lot, just because they said, "If you 
wouldn't mind moving," instead of "Now, then, 
out of it!" Gruffness and the malicious satisfac- 
tion of candid gratuitous criticism are the root of 
the evil in the home of the Smiths. And the con- 
sequences of them are very much more serious 
than the Smiths in their gruffness imagine. 



Ill 

SPENDING AND GETTING VALUE 

I now allude to those financial harassments 
which have been a marked feature of the home 
founded and managed by Mr. Smith, who has 
been eternally worried about money. The children 
have grown up in this atmosphere of fiscal anxiety, 
accustomed to the everlasting question whether 
ends will meet; accustomed to the everlasting de- 
bate whether a certain thing can be afforded. And 
nearly every house in the street where the Smiths 
live is in the same case. 

Why is this? Is it that incomes are lower and 
commodities and taxes higher in England than in 
other large European countries? No; the con- 
trary is the fact. In no large European country 
will money go so far as in England. Is it that 
the English race is deficient in financial skill? 
England is the only large European country which 
genuinely balances its national budget every year 
and regularly liquidates its debts. 

I wish to hint to Mr. Smith that he differs in 
one very important respect from the Mr. Smith 
of France, and the Mr. Smith of Germany, his 
only serious rivals. In the matter of money, he 
always asks himself, not how little he can spend, 
but how much he can spend. At the end of a life- 

327 



328 PARIS NIGHTS 

time the result is apparent. Or when he has a 
daughter to marry off, the result is apparent. In 
England economy is a virtue. In France, for ex- 
ample, it is merely a habit. 

€?• J* «5* t?* 

Mr. Smith is extravagant. He has an extrava- 
gant way of looking at life. On his own plane 
Mr. Smith is a haughty nobleman of old days; he 
is royal; he is a born hangman of expense. 

"What?" cries Mr. Smith, furiousi "Me ex- 
travagant! Why, I have always been most care- 
ful ! I have had to be, with my income !" 

He may protest. But I am right. The very 
tone with which he says: "With my income!" gives 
Mr. Smith away. What is the matter with Mr. 
Smith's income? Has it been less than the aver- 
age? Not at all. The only thing that is the mat- 
ter with Mr. Smith's income is that he has never 
accepted it as a hard, prosaic fact. He has always 
pretended that it was a magic income, with which 
miracles could be performed. He has always been 
trying to pour two pints and a gill out of a quart 
pot. He has always hoped that luck would befall 
him. On a hundred and fifty a year he ever en- 
deavoured to live as though he had two hundred. 
And so on, as his income increased. 

When he married he began by taking the high- 
est-rented house that he could possibly afford, in- 
stead of the cheapest that he could possibly do with, 
and he has been going on ever since in the same 
style — creating an effect, cutting a figure. 



SPENDING 329 

This system of living, the English system, has 
indubitable advantages. It encourages enterprise 
and prevents fossilisation. It gives dramatic in- 
terest to existence. And, after all, though at the 
age of 50 Mr. Smith possesses little beside a house- 
ful of furniture and his insurance policy, he can 
say that he has had something for his money every 
year and every day of the year. He can truth- 
fully say, when charged with having "eaten his 
cake," that a cake is a futile thing till it is eaten. 

The French system has disadvantages. The 
French Mr. Smith does not try to make money, 
he tries merely to save it. He shrinks from the 
perils of enterprise. He does not want to create. 
He frequently becomes parsimonious, and he may 
postpone the attempt to get some fun out of life 
until he is past the capacity for fun. 

On the other hand, the financial independence 
with which his habits endow him is a very precious 
thing. One finds it everywhere in France; it is in- 
stinctive in the attitude of the average man. That 
chronic tightness has often led Mr. Smith to make 
unpleasing compromises with his dignity; such 
compromises are rarer in France. Take a person 
into your employ in France, even the humblest, 
and you will soon find out how the habit of a mar- 
gin affects the demeanour of the employed. Per- 
sonally, I have often been inconvenienced by this 
in France. But I have liked it. After all, one 
prefers to be dealing with people who can call their 
souls their own. 



330 PARIS NIGHTS 

Mr. Smith need not go to the extremes of the 
extremists in France, but he might advantageously 
go a long way towards them. He ought to recon- 
cile himself definitely to his income. He ought to 
cease his constant attempt to perform miracles with 
his income. It is really not pleasant for him to 
be fixed as he is at the age of fifty, worried be- 
cause he has to provide wedding presents for his 
son and his daughter. And how can he preach 
thrift to his son John? John knows his father. 

There is another, and an even more ticklish, 
point. It being notorious that Mr. Smith spends 
too much money, let us ask whether Mr. Smith gets 
value for the money he spends. I must again com- 
pare with France, whose homes I know. Now, 
as regards solid, standing comfort, there is no com- 
parison between Mr. Smith's home and the home 
of the French Mr. Smith. Our Mr. Smith wins. 
His standard is higher. He has more room, more 
rooms, more hygiene, and more general facilities 
for putting himself at his ease. 

«5* €?• (?• «5* 

But these contrivances, once acquired, do not 
involve a regular outlay, except so far as they af- 
fect rent. And in the household budget rent is a 
less important item than food and cleansing. Now, 
the raw materials of the stuff necessary to keep a 
household healthily alive cost more in France than 
in England. And the French Mr. Smith's income 
is a little less than our Mr. Smith's. Yet the 
French Mr. Smith, while sitting on a less comfort- 
able chair in a smaller room, most decidedly con- 



SPENDING 331 

sumes better meals than our Mr. Smith. In other 
words, he lives better. 

I have often asked myself, in observing the fam- 
ily life of Monsieur and Madame Smith: "How on 
earth do they do it?" Only one explanation is pos- 
sible. They understand better how to run a house 
economically in France than we do in England. 

Now Mrs. Smith in her turn cries : "Me extrava- 
gant?" 

Yes, relatively, extravagant! It is a hard say- 
ing, but, I believe, a true one. Extravagance is 
in the air of England. A person always in a room 
where there is a slight escape of gas does not smell 
the gas — until he has been out for a walk and re- 
turned. So it is with us. 

As for you, Mrs. Smith, I would not presume to 
say in what you are extravagant. But I guaran- 
tee that Madame Smith would "do it on less." 

The enormous periodical literature now devoted 
largely to hints on household management shows 
that we, perhaps unconsciously, realise a defect. 
You don't find this literature in France. They 
don't seem to need it. 



IV 

THE PARENTS 

Let us look at Mr. and Mrs. Smith one evening 
when they are by themselves, leaving the children 
entirely out of account. For in addition to being 
father and mother, they are husband and wife. 
Not that I wish to examine the whole institution 
of marriage — people who dare to do so deserve 
the Victoria Cross ! My concern is simply with the 
effects of the organisation of the home — on mar- 
riage and other things. 

Well, you see them together. Mr. Smith has 
done earning money for the day, and Mrs. Smith 
has done spending it. They are at leisure to en- 
joy this home of theirs. This is what Mr. Smith 
passes seven hours a day at business for. This 
is what he got married for. This is what he wanted 
when he decided to take Mrs. Smith, if he could 
get her. These hours ought to be the flower of 
their joint life. How are these hours affected by 
the organisation of the home? 

I will tell you how Mrs. Smith is affected. Mrs. 
Smith is worried by it. And in addition she is 
conscious that her efforts are imperfectly appreci- 
ated, and her difficulties unrealised. As regards 
the directing and daily recreation of the home, Mr. 
Smith's attitude on this evening by the domestic 

339 



THE PARENTS 333 

hearth is at best one of armed neutrality. His 
criticism is seldom other than destructive. Mr. 
Smith is a strange man. If he went to a lot of 
trouble to get a small holding under the Small 
Holdings Act, and then left the cultivation of the 
ground to another person not scientifically trained 
to agriculture he would be looked upon as a ninny. 
When a man takes up a hobby, he ought surely 
to be terrifically interested in it. What is Mr. 
Smith's home but his hobby? 

«?• *?* <?• O* 

He has put Mrs. Smith in to manage it. He 
himself, once a quarter, discharges the complicated 
and delicate function of paying the rent. All the 
rest, the little matters, such as victualling and 
brightening — trifles, nothings! — he leaves to Mrs. 
Smith. He is not satisfied with Mrs. Smith's ac- 
tivities, and he does not disguise the fact. He is 
convinced that Mrs. Smith spends too much, and 
that she is not businesslike. He is convinced that 
running a house is child's play compared to what 
he has to do. Now, as to Mrs. Smith being un- 
businesslike, is Mr. Smith himself businesslike? If 
he is, he greatly differs from his companions in 
the second-class smoker. The average office and 
the average works are emphatically not run on 
business lines, except in theory. Daily experi- 
ence proves this. The businesslikeness of the aver- 
age business man is a vast and hollow pretence. 

Besides, who could expect Mrs. Smith to be 
businesslike ? She was never taught to be business- 
like. Mr, Smith was apprenticed, or indentured, 



334 PARIS NIGHTS 

to his vocation. But Mrs. Smith wasn't. Mrs. 
Smith has to feed a family, and doesn't know the 
principles of diet. She has to keep children in 
health, and couldn't describe their organs to save 
her life. She has to make herself and the home 
agreeable to the eye, and knows nothing artistic 
about colour or form. 

I am an ardent advocate of Mrs. Smith. The 
marvel is not that Mrs. Smith does so badly, but 
that she does so well. If women were not more 
conscientious than men in their duties Mr. Smith's 
home would be more amateurish than it is, and Mr. 
Smith's "moods" more frequent than they are. 
For Mrs. Smith is amateurish. Example: Mrs. 
Smith is bothered to death by the daily question, 
What can we have for dinner? She splits her head 
in two in order to avoid monotony. Mrs. Smith's 
repertoire probably consists of about 50 dishes, 
and if she could recall them all to her mind at once 
her task would be much simplified. But she can't 
think of them when she wants to think of them. 
Supposing that in Mrs. Smith's kitchen hung a 
card containing a list of all her dishes, she could 
run her eyes over it and choose instantly what 
dishes would suit that day's larder. Did you ever 
see such a list in Mrs. Smith's kitchen? No. The 
idea has not occurred to Mrs. Smith! 

I say also that to spend money efficiently is quite 
as difficult as to earn it efficiently. Any fool can, 
somehow, earn a sovereign, but to get value for a 
sovereign in small purchases means skill and im- 
mense knowledge. Mr. Smith has never had ex- 



THE PARENTS 335 

perience of the difficulty of spending money ef- 
ficiently. Most of Mr. Smith's payments are fixed 
and mechanical. Mrs. Smith is the spender. Mr. 
Smith chiefly exercises his skill as a spender in his 
clothes and in tobacco. Look at the result. Any 
showy necktie shop and furiously-advertised to- 
bacco is capable of hood-winking Mr. Smith. 

<5* t?* t5* e5* 

In further comparison of their respective "jobs" 
it has to be noted that Mrs. Smith's is rendered 
doubly difficult by the fact that she is always at 
close quarters with the caprices of human nature. 
Mrs. Smith is continually bumping up against hu- 
man nature in various manifestations. The hu- 
man butcher-boy may arrive late owing to marbles, 
and so the dinner must either be late or the meat 
undercooked; or Mr. Smith, through too much 
smoking, may have lost his appetite, and veal out 
of Paradise wouldn't please him! Mrs. Smith's 
job is transcendently delicate. 

In fine, though Mrs. Smith's job is perhaps not 
quite so difficult as she fancies it to be, it is much 
more difficult than Mr. Smith fancies it to be. 
And if it is not as well done as she thinks, it is much 
better done than Mr. Smith thinks. But she will 
never persuade Mr. Smith that he is wrong until 
Mr. Smith condescends to know what he is talking 
about in the discussion of household matters. Mr. 
Smith's opportunities of criticism are far too am- 
ple ; or, at any rate, he makes use of them unfairly, 
and not as a man of honour. Supposing that Mrs. 
Smith finished all her work at four o'clock, and was 



336 PARIS NIGHTS 

free to stroll into Mr. Smith's place of business 
and criticise there everything that did not please 
her! (It is true that she wouldn't know what she 
was talking about; but neither does Mr. Smith at 
home ; at home Mr. Smith finds pride in not know- 
ing what he is talking about.) Mr. Smith would 
have a bit of a "time" between four and six. 

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are united by a genuine af- 
fection. But their secret attitudes on the subject 
of home management cause that affection, by a 
constant slight friction, to wear thin. It must be 
so. And it will be so until (a) Mr. Smith deigns 
to learn the business of his home; (b) Mr. Smith 
ceases to expect Mrs. Smith to perform miracles; 
(c) Mrs. Smith ceases to be an amateur in domes- 
tic economy — i. e., until domestic economy becomes 
the principal subject in the upper forms of the 
average girls' school. 

At present the organisation of the home is an 
agency against the triumph of marriage as an in- 
stitution. 



HARRY S POINT OF VIEW 

You may have forgotten young Harry Smith, 
whom I casually mentioned in my first section, the 
schoolboy of fifteen. I should not be surprised to 
hear that you had forgotten him. He is often for- 
gotten in the home of the Smiths. Compared with 
Mr. Smith, the creator of the home, or with the 
lordly eldest son John, who earns his own living and 
is nearly engaged, or with Mary, who actually is en- 
gaged, young Harry is unimportant. Still, his 
case is very interesting, and his own personal im- 
pression of the home of the Smiths must be of 
value. 

Is Harry Smith happy in the home ? Of course, 
one would not expect him to be perfectly happy. 
But is he as happy as circumstances in themselves 
allow? My firm answer is that he is not. I am 
entirely certain that on the whole Harry Smith 
regards home as a fag, a grind, and a bore. Mr. 
Smith, on reading these lines, is furious, and Mrs. 
Smith is hurt. What! Our dear Harry experi- 
ences tedium and disappointment with his dear pa- 
rents? Nonsense! 

The fact is, no parents will believe that their 
children are avoidably unhappy. It is universally 
agreed nowadays, that children in the eighteenth 

337 



338 PARIS NIGHTS 

century, and in the first half of the nineteenth, 
had a pretty bad time under the sway of their el- 
ders. But the parent of those epochs would have 
been indignant at any accusation of ill-treatment. 
He would have called his sway beneficent and his 
affection doting. The same with Mr. and Mrs. 
Smith ! Now, I do not mean, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, 
that you crudely ill-treat your son, tying him to 
posts, depriving him of sleep, or pulling chestnuts 
out of the fire with his fingers. (See reports of 
S.P.C.C.) A thousand times, no! You are soft- 
hearted. Mrs. Smith is occasionally somewhat too 
soft-hearted. Still, I maintain that you ill-treat 
Harry in a very subtle, moral way, by being funda- 
mentally unjust to him in your own minds. 

€•* I?* «•* (•• 

Just look at your Harry, my excellent and con- 
scientious Mr. Smith. He is all alive there, a real 
human being, not a mechanical doll ; he has feelings 
just like yours, only, perhaps, more sensitive. He 
finds himself in a world which — well, of which the 
less said the better. You know what the world is, 
Mr. Smith, and you have often said what you know. 
He is in this world, and he can't get out of it. You 
have started him on the dubious adventure, and he 
has got to go through with it. And what is the 
reason of his being here? Did you start him out of 
a desire to raise citizens for the greatest of empires ? 
Did you imagine he would enjoy it hugely? Did 
you act from a sense of duty to the universe? 
None of these tilings, Mr. Smith! Your Harry 



HARRY'S POINT OF VIEW 339 

is merely here because you thought that Mrs. Smith 
was somehow charmingly different from other girls. 
He is a consequence of your egotistic desire to en- 
large your borders, of your determination to have 
what you wanted. Every time you cast eyes 
on him he ought to remind you what a self-seeking 
and consequence-scorning person you are, Mr. 
Smith. And not only is he from no choice or wish 
of his own in a world as to which the most power- 
ful intellects are still arguing whether it is tragic 
or ridiculous; but he is unarmed for the perils of 
the business. He is very ignorant and very inex- 
perienced, and he is continually passing through 
disconcerting modifications. 

These are the facts, my dear sir. You cannot 
deny that you, for your own satisfaction, have got 
Harry into a rather fearful mess. Do you con- 
stantly make the effort to be sympathetic to this 
helpless victim of your egotism? You do not. 
And what is worse, to quiet your own consciences, 
both you and Mrs. Smith are for ever pouring into 
his ear a shocking — I won't call it "lie" — perver- 
sion of the truth. You are always absurdly try- 
ing to persuade him that the obligation is on his 
side. Not a day wears to night but Mrs. Smith 
expresses to Harry her conviction that by good be- 
haviour he ought to prove his gratitude to you for 
being such a kind father. 

And you talk to him in the same strain of Mrs. 
Smith. The sum of your teaching is an insinua- 
tion — often more than an insinuation — that you 



340 PARIS NIGHTS 

have conferred a favour on Harry. Supposing 
that some one pitched you into the Ship Canal — 
one of the salubrious reaches near Warrington, Mr. 
Smith — and then clumsily dragged you half-way 
out, and punctured his efforts by a reiterated state- 
ment that gratitude to him ought to fill your breast, 
how would you feel? 

«?• «?• «?• t?* 

Things are better than they were, but the general 
attitude of the parent to the child is still funda- 
mentally insincere, and it mars the success of the 
home, for it engenders in the child a sense of in- 
justice. Do you fancy that Harry is for an in- 
stant deceived by the rhetoric of his parents? Not 
he ! Children are very difficult to deceive, and they 
are horribly frank to themselves. It is quite bad 
enough for Harry to be compelled to go to school. 
Harry, however, has enough sense to perceive that 
he must go to school. But when his parents be- 
gin to yarn that he ought to be glad to go to school, 
that he ought to enjoy the privilege of solving quad- 
ratic equations and learning the specific gravities 
of elements, he is quite naturally alienated. 

He does not fail to observe that in a hundred 
things the actions of his parents contradict their 
precepts. When, being a boy, he behaves like a 
boy, and his parents affect astonishment and dis- 
gust, he knows it is an affectation. When his 
father, irritated by a superabundance of noise, 
frowns and instructs Harry to get away for he is 
tired of the sight of him, Harry is excusably af- 
fronted in his secret pride. 



HARRY'S POINT OF VIEW 341 

These are illustrations of the imperfect success 
of the Smiths' home as an organisation for making 
Harry happy. Useless for Mr. Smith to argue 
that it is "all for Harry's own good." He would 
simply be aggravating his offence. Discipline, the 
enforcement of regulations, is necessary for Harry. 
I strongly favour discipline. But discipline can 
be practised with sympathy or without sympathy; 
with or without the accompaniment of hypocritical 
remarks that deceive no one ; with or without odious 
assumptions of superiority and philanthropy. 

I trust that young John and } T oung Mary will 
take note, and that their attitude to their Harrys 
will be, not: "You ought to be glad you're alive," 
but: "We thoroughly sympathise with your diffi- 
culties. We quite agree that these rules and pro- 
hibitions and injunctions are a nuisance for you, 
but they will save you trouble later, and we will be 
as un-cast-iron as we can." Honesty is the best 
policy. 



VI 

THE FUTURE 

The cry is that the institution of the home is be- 
ing undermined, and that, therefore, society is in 
the way of perishing. It is stated that the home 
is insidiously attacked, at one end of the scale, by 
the hotel and restaurant habit, and, at the other, 
by such innovations as the feeding-of-school-chil- 
dren habit. We are asked to contemplate the 
crowded and glittering dining-rooms of the Mid- 
land, the Carlton, the Adelphi, on, for instance, 
Christmas Night, when, of all nights, people ought 
to be on their own hearths, and we are told: "It 
has come to this. This 1 is the result of the craze for 
pleasure! Where is the home now?" 

To which my reply would be that the home re- 
mains just about where it w T as. The spectacular 
existence of a few great hotels has never mirrored 
the national life. Is the home of the Smiths, for 
example, being gradually overthrown by the res- 
taurant habit? The restaurant habit will only 
strengthen the institution of the home. The most 
restaurant-loving people on the face of the earth 
are the French, and the French home is a far more 
powerful, more closely-knit organisation than our 
own. Why! Up to last year a Frenchman of 
sixty could not marry without the consent of his 

343 



THE FUTURE 343 

parents, if they happened to be alive. I wonder 
what the Smiths would say to that as an example 
of the disintegration of the home by the restaurant 
habit! 

Most assuredly the modest, medium, average 
home founded by Mr. Smith has not been in the 
slightest degree affected either by the increase of 
luxury and leisure, or by any alleged meddlesome- 
ness on the part of the State. The home founded 
by Mr. Smith, with all its faults — and I have not 
spared them — is too convenient, too economical, 
too efficient, and, above all, too natural, to be over- 
thrown, or even shaken, by either luxury or grand- 
motherliness. To change the metaphor and call it 
a ship, it remains absolutely right and tight. It is 
true that Mr. and Mrs. Smith assert sadly that 
young John and young Mary have much more lib- 
erty than they ever had, but Mr. and Mrs. Smith's 
parents asserted exactly the same thing of Mr. and 
Mrs. Smith, and their grandparents of their par- 
ents, and so on backwards doubtless up to Noah. 
That is only part of a process, a beneficent pro- 
cess. 

(5* «?■ *?• »?• 

Nevertheless, the home of the Smiths has a very 
real enemy, and that enemy is not outside, but in- 
side. That enemy is Matilda. I have not hitherto 
discussed Matilda. She sleeps in the attic, and 
earns £18 a year, rising to £20. She doesn't 
count, and yet she is the factor which, more than 
any other, will modify the home of the Smiths. 

Let me say no word against Matilda. She is a 



3U PARIS NIGHTS 

respectable and a passably industrious, and a pass- 
ably obedient girl. I know her. She usually 
opens the door for me, and we converse "like any- 
thing"! "Good evening, Matilda," I say to her. 
"Good evening, sir," says she. And in her tone 
and mine is an implicit recognition of the fact that 
I have been very good-natured and sjmipathetic in 
greeting her as a human being. "Mr. Smith in?" 
I ask, smiling. "Yes, sir. Will you come this 
way?" says she. Then I forget her. A nice, 
pleasant girl! And she has a good place, too. 
The hygienic conditions are superior to those of a 
mill, and the labour less fatiguing. And both Mrs. 
Smith and Miss Mary help her enormously in "lit- 
tle ways." She eats better food than she would 
eat at home, and she has a bedroom all to herself. 
You might say she was on velvet. 

And yet, in the middle of one of those jolly, un- 
affected evenings that I occasionally spend with 
the Smiths, when the piano has been going, and I 
have helped Mrs. Smith to cheat herself at pa- 
tience, and given Mr. Smith the impression that 
he can teach me a thing or two, and discussed cig- 
arettes with John, and songs with Mary, and the 
sense of intimate fellowship and mutual compre- 
hension is in the air, in comes Matilda suddenly 
with a tray of coffee — and makes me think furi- 
ously ! She goes out as rapidly as she came in, for 
she is bound by an iron law not to stop an instant, 
and if she happened to remark in a friendly, human 
way: "You seem to be having a good time here!" 



THE FUTURE 345 

all the Smiths, and I too, would probably drop 
down dead from pained shock. 

But though she is gone I continue to think furi- 
ously. Where had she been all the jolly evening? 
Where has she returned to? Well, to her beauti- 
ful hygienic kitchen, where she sits or works all b} r 
herself, on velvet. My thoughts follow her ex- 
istence through the day, and I remember that from 
morn till odorous eve she must not, save on busi- 
ness, sj)eak unless she is spoken to. Then I give 
up thinking about Matilda's case, because it annoys 
me. I recall a phrase of young John's ; he is youth- 
fully interested in social problems, and he wants a 
latch-key vote. Said John to me once, when an- 
other Matilda had left: "Of course, if one thought 
too much about Matilda's case, one wouldn't be 
able to sleep at nights." 

€?• «?• t5* <?• 

When you visit the Smiths the home seems al- 
ways to be in smooth working order. But ask Mrs. 
Smith! Ask Mary! Get beneath the surface. 
And you will glimpse the terrible trouble that lies 
concealed. Mrs. Smith began with Matilda the 
First. Are you aware that this is Matilda the 
Fortieth, and that between Matilda the Fortieth 
and Matilda the Forty-first there will probably be 
an interregnum? Mrs. Smith simply cannot get 
Matildas. And when by happy chance she does 
get a Matilda, the misguided girl won't see the 
velvet with which the kitchen and the attic are car- 
peted. 



346 PARIS NIGHTS 

Mrs. Smith says the time will come when the race 
of Matildas will have disappeared. And Mrs. 
Smith is right. The "general servant" is bound 
to disappear utterly. In North America she has 
already almost disappeared. Think of that! In- 
stead of her, in many parts of the American con- 
tinent, there is an independent stranger who, if she 
came to the Smiths, would have the ineffable impu- 
dence to eat at the same table as the Smiths, just as 
though she was of the same clay, and who, when told 
to do something, would be quite equal to snapping 
out : "Do it yourself." 

But you say that the inconvenience brought 
about by the disappearance of Matilda would be 
too awful to contemplate. I venture to predict 
that the disappearance of Matilda will not ex- 
haust the resources of civilisation. The home will 
ciontinue. But mechanical invention will have to 
be quickened in order to replace Matilda's red 
hands. And there will be those suburban restau- 
rants ! And I have a pleasing vision of young John, 
in the home which he builds, cleaning his own boots. 
Inconvenient, but it is coming I 



STREETS ROADS 
AND TRAINS— 1907-1909 



IN WATLING STREET 

Upon an evening in early autumn, I, who had 
never owned an orchard before, stood in my or- 
chard; behind me were a phalanx of some sixty 
trees bearing (miraculously, to my simplicity) a 
fine crop of apples and plums — my apples and 
plums, and a mead of some two acres, my mead, 
upon which I discerned possibilities of football and 
cricket ; behind these was a double greenhouse con- 
taining three hundred pendent bunches of grapes 
of the dark and aristocratic variety which I thought 
I had seen in Piccadilly ticketed at four shillings 
a pound — my grapes; still further behind uprose 
the chimneys of a country-house, uncompromis- 
ingly plain and to some eyes perhaps ugly, but my 
country-house, the lease of which, stamped, was in 
my pocket. Immediately in front of me was a 
luxuriant hedge which, long undipped, had at- 
tained a height of at least fifteen feet. Beyond the 
hedge the ground fell away sharply into a drain- 
ing ditch, and on the other side of the ditch, 
through the interstices of the hedge, I perceived 
glimpses of a very straight and very white high- 
way. 

This highway was Watling Street, built of the 
Romans, and even now surviving as the most fa- 

319 



350 PARIS NIGHTS 

mous road in England. I had "learnt" it at school, 
and knew that it once ran from Dover to London, 
from London to Chester and from Chester to York. 
Just recently I had tracked it diligently on a series 
of county maps, and discovered that, though only 
vague fragments of it remained in Kent, Surrey, 
Shropshire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire, it still flour- 
ished and abounded exceedingly in my particular 
neighbourhood as a right line, austere, renowned, 
indispensable, clothed in its own immortal dust. I 
could see but patches of it in the twilight, but I 
was aware that it stretched fifteen miles southeast 
of me, and unnumbered miles northwest of me, with 
scarcely a curve to break the splendid inexorable 
monotony of its career. To me it was a wonderful 
road — more wonderful than the Great North Road, 
or the military road from Moscow to Vladivostock. 
And the most wonderful thing about it was that 
I lived on it. After all, few people can stamp 
the top of their notepaper, "Watling Street, Eng- 
land." It is not a residential thoroughfare. 

Only persons of imagination can enter into my 
feelings at that moment. I had spent two-thirds 
of mjr life in a town (squalid, industrial) and the 
remaining third in Town. I thought I knew every 
creosoted block in Fleet Street, every bookstall in 
Shoreditch, every hosier's in Piccadilly. I cer- 
tainly did know the order of stations on the Inner 
Circle, the various frowns of publishers, the strange 
hysteric, silly atmosphere of theatrical first-nights, 
and stars of the Empire and Alhambra (by sight), 
and the vicious odours of a thousand and one res- 



IN WATLING STREET 351 

taurants. And lo! burdened with all this accumu- 
lated knowledge, shackled by all these habits, as- 
sociations, entrancements, I was yet moved by 
some mysterious and far-off atavism to pack up, 
harness the oxen, "trek," and go and live in "the 
country." 

Of course I soon discovered that there is no 
such thing as "the country," just as there is no 
such thing as Herbert Spencer's "state." "The 
country" is an entity which exists only in the brains 
of an urban population, whose members ridicu- 
lously regard the terrene surface as a concatenation 
of towns surrounded by earthy space. There is 
England, and there are spots on England called 
towns: that is all. But at that time I too had 
the illusion of "the country," a district where one 
saw "trees," "flowers," and "birds." For me, a 
tree was not an oak or an ash or an elm or a birch 
or a chestnut; it was just a "tree." For me there 
were robins, sparrows, and crows; the rest of the 
winged fauna was merely "birds." I recognised 
roses, daisies, dandelions, forget-me-nots, chrysan- 
themums, and one or two more blossoms; all else 
was "flowers." Remember that all this happened 
before the advent of the nature-book and the sub- 
lime invention of week-ending, and conceive me 
plunging into this unknown, inscrutable, and rec- 
ondite "country," as I might have plunged fully 
clothed and unable to swim into the sea. It was 
a prodigious adventure! When my friends asked 
me, with furtive glances at each other as in the 
presence of a lunatic, why I was going to live in 



352 PARIS NIGHTS 

the country, I could only reply: "Because I want 
to. I want to see what it's like." I might have 
attributed my action to the dearness of season- 
tickets on the Underground, to the slowness of 
omnibuses or the danger of cabs : my friends would 
have been just as wise, and I just as foolish, in 
their esteem. I admit that their attitude of be- 
nevolent contempt, of far-seeing sagacity, gave me 
to think. And although I was obstinate, it was 
with a pang of misgiving that I posted the notice 
of quitting my suburban residence; and the pang 
was more acute when I signed the contract for the 
removal of my furniture. I called on my friends 
before the sinister day of exodus. 

"Good-bye," I said. 

"Au revoir," they replied, with calm vaticinatory 
assurance, "we shall see you back again in a year." 

t?* <?* (?• *?• 

Thus, outwardly braggart, inwardly quaking, I 
departed. The quaking had not ceased as I stood, 
in the autumn twilight, in my beautiful orchard, 
in front of my country-house. Toiling up the 
slope from the southward, I saw an enormous van 
with three horses: the last instalment of my chat- 
tels. As it turned lumberingly at right angles into 
my private road or boreen, I said aloud : 

"I've done it." 

I had. I felt like a statesman who has handed 
an ultimatum to a king's messenger. No with- 
drawal was now possible. From the reverie nat- 
ural to this melancholy occasion I was aroused by 
a disconcerting sound of collision, the rattle, of 



IN WATLING STREET 353 

chains, and the oaths customary to drivers in a dif- 
ficulty. I ran towards the house and down the 
weedy drive bordered by trees which a learned gar- 
dener had told me were of the variety, cupressus 
lawsoniana. In essaying the perilous manoeuvre 
of twisting round three horses and a long van on a 
space about twenty feet square, the driver had 
overset the brick pier upon which swung my gar- 
den-gate. The unicorn horse of the team was 
nosing at the cupressus lawsoniana and the van was 
scotched in the gateway. I thought, "This is an 
omen." I was, however, reassured by the sight of 
two butchers and two bakers each asseverating that 
nothing could afford him greater pleasure than to 
call every day for orders. A minute later the post- 
man, in his own lordly equipage, arrived with my 
newspapers and his respects. I tore open a paper 
and read news of London. I convinced myself 
that London actually existed, though I were never 
to see it again. The smashing of the pier dwindled 
from a catastrophe to an episode. 

«?• «7* «?* t?* 

The next morning very early I was in Watling 
Street. Since then 

Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, 

but this was the first in the sequence of those 
Shaksperean mornings, and it was also, subjec- 
tively, the finest. I shall not describe it, since, ob- 
jectively and in the quietude of hard fact, I now 
perceive that it could not have been in the least 



354 PARIS NIGHTS 

remarkable. The sun rose over the southward 
range which Bunyan took for the model of his De- 
lectable Mountains, and forty or fifty square miles 
of diversified land was spread out in front of me. 
The road cut down for a couple of miles like a geo- 
metrician's rule, and disappeared in a slight S 
curve, the work of a modern generation afraid of 
gradients, on to the other side of the Delectable 
Mountains. I thought: "How magnificent were 
those Romans in their disregard of everything ex- 
cept direction!" And being a professional novel- 
ist I naturally began at once to consider the possi- 
bilities of exploiting Watling Street in fiction. 
Then I climbed to the brow of my own hill, whence, 
at the foot of the long northerly slope, I could 
descry the outposts of my village, a mile away; 
there was no habitation of mankind nearer to me 
than this picturesque and venerable hamlet, which 
seemed to lie inconsiderable on the great road like 
a piece of paper. The seventy-four telegraph 
wires which border the great road run above the 
roofs of Winghurst as if they were unaware of its 
existence. "And Winghurst," I reflected, "is 
henceforth my metropolis." No office! No mem- 
orising of time-tables! No daily struggle-for- 
lunch! Winghurst, with three hundred inhabi- 
tants, the centre of excitement, the fount of ex- 
ternal life! 

The course of these ordinary but inevitable 
thoughts was interrupted by my consciousness of 
a presence near me. A man coughed. He had 
approached me, in almost soleless boots, on the 



IN WATLING STREET 355 

grassy footpath. For a brief second I regarded 
him with that peculiar fellow-feeling which a man 
who has risen extremely early is wont to exhibit 
towards another man who has risen extremely 
early. But finding no answering vanity in his un- 
distinguished features I quickly put on an appear- 
ance of usualness, to indicate that I might be found 
on that spot at that hour every morning. The 
man looked shabby, and that Sherlock Holmes who 
lies concealed in each one of us decided for me that 
he must be a tailor out-of-work. 

"Good morning, sir," he said. 

"Good morning," I said. 

"Do you want to buy a good recipe for a horse, 
sir?" he asked. 

"A horse?" I repeated, wondering whether he 
was a lunatic, or a genius who had discovered a 
way to manufacture horses. 

"Yes, sir," he said, "They often fall sick, sir, 
you know. The saying is, as I daresay you've 
heard, 'Never trust a woman's word or a horse's 
health.' " 

I corrected his quotation. 

"I've got one or two real good recipes," he re- 
sumed. 

"But I've got no horse," I replied, and that 
seemed to finish the interview. 

"No offence, I hope, sir," he said, and passed 
on towards the Delectable Mountains. 

He was a mystery; his speech disclosed no 
marked local accent; he had certainly had some 
education; and he was hawking horse-remedies in 



356 PARIS NIGHTS 

Watling Street at sunrise. Here was the germ 
of my first lesson in rusticity. Except in towns, 
the "horsey" man does not necessarily look horsey. 
That particular man resembled a tailor, and by a 
curious coincidence the man most fearfully and 
wonderfuly learned in equine lore that I have yet 
known is a tailor. 

But horses ! Six miles away to the West I could 
see the steam of expresses on the London and 
North Western Main line; four miles to the East 
I could see the steam of expresses on the Midland. 
And here was an individual offering stable-recipes 
as simply as though they had been muffins! I re- 
flected on my empty stable, harness-room, coach- 
house. I began to suspect that I was in a land 
where horses entered in the daily and hourly exist- 
ence of the people. I had known for weeks that 
I must buy a horse ; the nearest town and the near- 
est railway station were three miles off. But now, 
with apprehension, I saw that mysterious and dan- 
gerous mercantile operation to be dreadfully im- 
minent : me, coram publico, buying a horse, me the 
dupe of copers, me a butt for the covert sarcasm 
of a village omniscient about horses and intolerant 
of ignorance on such a subject! 
«* & «* & 

Down in the village, that early morning, I saw 
a pony and an evidently precarious trap standing 
in front of the principal shop. I had read about 
the "village-shop" in novels; I had even ventured 
to describe it in fiction of my own ; and I was equally 
surprised and delighted to find that the village- 



IN WATLING STREET 357 

shop of fiction was also the village-shop of fact. 
It was the mere truth that one could buy every- 
thing in this diminutive emporium, that the multi- 
fariousness of its odours excelled that of the odours 
of Cologne, and that the proprietor, who had never 
seen me before, instantly knew me and all about 
me. Soon I was in a fair way to know something 
of the proprietor. He. was informing me that he 
had five little children, when one of the five, snuf- 
fling and in a critical mood, tumbled into the shop 
out of an obscure Beyond. 

"And what's your name?" I enquired of the girl, 
with that fatuous, false blandness of tone which 
the inexpert always adopt toward children. I 
thought of the five maidens whose names were five 
sweet symphonies, and moreover I deemed it politic 
to establish friendly relations with my monop- 
olist. 

"She's a little shy," I remarked. 

"It's a boy, sir," said the monopolist. 

It occurred to me that Nature was singularly 
uninventive in devising new quandaries for the 
foolish. 

"Tell the gentleman your name." 

Thus admonished, the boy emitted one mono- 
syllable: "Guy." 

"We called him Guy because he was born on the 
fifth of November," the monopolist was good 
enough to explain. 

As I left the shop a man driving a pony drew 
up at the door with an immense and sudden flourish 
calculated to impress the simple. I noticed that 



358 PARIS NIGHTS 

the pony was the same animal which I had previ- 
ously seen standing there. 

"Want to buy a pony, sir?" The question was 
thrown at me like a missile that narrowly escaped 
my head ; launched in a voice which must once have 
been extremely powerful, but which now, whether 
by abuse of shouting in the open air or by the de- 
teriorating effect of gin on the vocal chords, was 
only a loud, passionate whisper: so that, though 
the man obviously bawled with all his might, the 
drum of one's ear was not shattered. I judged, 
partly from the cut of his coat and the size of the 
buttons on it, and partly from the creaminess of 
the shaggy, long-tailed pony, that my questioner 
was or had been connected with circuses. His very 
hand was against him; the turned-back podgy 
thumb showed acquisitiveness, and the enormous 
Gopliir diamonds in brass rings argued a certain 
lack of really fine taste. His face had literally 
the brazen look, and that absolutely hard, impudent, 
glaring impassivity acquired only by those who 
earn more than enough to drink by continually 
bouncing the public. 

"The finest pony in the county, sir." (It was 
an animal organism gingerly supported on four 
crooked legs; a quadruped and nothing more.) 
"The finest pony in the county!" he screamed, 
"Finest pony in England, sir! Not another like 
him! I took him to the Rothschild horse-show, 
but they wouldn't have him. Said I'd come too 
late to enter him for the first-clawss. They were 
afraid — afferaid! There was the water- jump. 



IN WATLING STREET 359 

'Stand aside, you blighters,' I said, 'and he'll jump 
that, the d — d gig and all.' But they were 
afferaid!" 

I asked if the animal was quiet to drive. 

"Quiet to drive, sir, did you say? I should say 
so. I says Away, and off he goes." Here the 
thin scream became a screech. "Then I says Pull 
up, you blighter, and he stops dead. A child could 
drive him. He don't want no driving. You could 
drive him with a silken thread." His voice melted, 
and with an exquisite tender cadence he repeated: 
"With a silk-en therredd!" 

"Well," I said. "How much?" 

"How much, did you say, sir? How much?" 
He made it appear that this question came upon 
him as an extraordinary surprise. I nodded. 

He meditated on the startling problem, and then 
yelled: "Thirty guineas. It's giving him away." 

"Make it shillings," I said. I was ingenuously 
satisfied with my retort, but the man somehow 
failed to appreciate it. 

"Come here," he said, in a tone of intimate con- 
fidence. "Come here. Listen. I've had that 
pony's picture painted. Finest artist in England, 
sir. And frame! You never see such a frame! 
At thirty guineas I'll throw the picture in. Look 
ye! That picture cost me two quid, and here's the 
receipt." He pulled forth a grimy paper, and I 
accepted it from his villainous fingers. It proved, 
however, to be a receipt for four pounds, and for 
the portrait, not of a pony, but of a man. 

"This is a receipt for your own portrait," I said. 



860 PARIS NIGHTS 

"Now wasn't that a coorious mistake for me to 
make?" he asked, as if demanding information. 
"Wasn't that a coorious mistake?" 

I was obliged to give him the answer he desired, 
and then he produced the correct receipt. 

"Now," he said wooingly, "There! Is it a trade? 
I'll bring you the picture to-night. Finest frame 
you ever saw! What? No? Look here, buy him 
at thirty guineas — say pounds — and I'll chuck you 
both the blighted pictures in!" 

"Away!" he screamed a minute later, and the 
cream pony, galvanised into frantic activity by that 
sound, and surely not controllable by a silken 
thread, scurried off towards the Delectable Moun- 
tains. 

This was my first insight into horse dealing. 



II 

STREET TALKING 

Few forms of amusement are more amusing and 
few forms of amusement cost less than to walk 
slowly along the crowded central thoroughfares of 
a great capital — London, Paris, or Timbuctoo — 
with ears open to catch fragments of conversation 
not specially intended for your personal consump- 
tion. It, perhaps, resembles slightly the justly 
blamed habit of listening at keyholes and the uni- 
versally practised habit of reading other peo- 
ple's postcards ; it is possibly not quite "nice." But, 
like both these habits, it is within the law, and the 
chances of it doing any one any harm are exceed- 
ingly remote. Moreover, it has in an amazing 
degree the excellent quality of taking you out of 
yourself — and putting you into some one else. De- 
tectives employ it, and if it were forbidden where 
would novelists be? Where, for example, would 
Mr. Pett Ridge be? Once yielded to, it grows on 
you ; it takes hold of you in its fell, insidious clutch, 
as does the habit of whisky, and becomes incur- 
able. You then treat it seriously; you make of it 
a passkey to the seventy and seven riddles of the 
universe, with wards for each department of life. 
You judge national characteristics by it; by it alone 
you compare rival civilisations. And, incidentally, 

361 



362 PARIS NIGHTS 

you somewhat increase your social value as a diner- 
out. 

$ £ £ <* 

For a long time I practised it in the streets of 
Paris, the city of efficient chatter, the city in which 
wayfarers talk with more exuberance and more 
grammar than anywhere else. Here are a few 
phrases, fair samples from lists of hundreds, which 
I have gathered and stored, on the boulevards and 
in quieter streets, such as the Rue Blanche, where 
conversation grows intimate on mild nights: — 

She is mad. 

She lived on the fourth floor last year. 

Yes, she is not bad, after all. 

Thou knowest, my old one, that my wife is a 
little bizarre. 

He has left her. 

They say she is very jealous. 

Anything except oysters. 

Thou annoyest me terribly, my dear. 

It is a question solely of the cache-corset. 

With those feet! 

He is a beau garcon, but — 

He is the fourth in three years. 

My big wolf! 

Do not say that, my small rabbit. 

She doesn't look it. 

It is open to any one to assert that such phrases 
have no significance, or that, if they have signifi- 
cance, their significance must necessarily be hidden 
from the casual observer. But to me they are like 
the finest lines in the tragedies of John Ford. 



STREET TALKING 363 

Marlow was at his best in the pentameter, but Ford 
usually got his thrill in a chipped line of about 
three words — three words which, while they mean 
nothing, mean everything. All depends on what 
you "read into" them. And the true impassioned 
student of human nature will read into the over- 
heard exclamations of the street a whole revealing 
philosophy. What! Two temperaments are sep- 
arately born, by the agency of chance or the equally 
puzzling agency of design, they one day collide, 
become intimate, and run parallel for a space. 
You perceive them darkly afar off; they approach 
you ; you are in utter ignorance of them ; and then 
in the instant of passing you receive a blinding 
flash of illumination, and the next instant they are 
eternally hidden from you again. That blinding 
flash of illumination may consist of "My big wolf I" 
or it may consist of "It is solely a question of the 
cache-corset." But in any case it is and must be 
profoundly significant. In any case it is a gleam 
of light on a mysterious place. Even the matter 
of the height of the floor on which she lived is 
charged with an overwhelming effect for one who 
loves his fellow-man. And lives there the being 
stupid or audacious enough to maintain that the 
French national character does not emerge charm- 
ingly and with a curious coherence from the frag- 
ments of soul-communication which I have set 

down? 

£ * a £ 

On New Year's Eve I was watching the phe- 
nomena of the universal scheme of things in Put- 



364 PARIS NIGHTS 

ney High-street. A man and a girl came down 
the footpath locked in the most intimate conversa- 
tion. I could see that they were perfectly absorbed 
in each other. And I heard the man say: — 

"Yes, Charlie is a very good judge of beer — 
Charlie is!" 

And then they were out of hearing, vanished 
from the realm of my senses for ever more. And 
yet people complain that the suburbs are dull! As 
for me, when I grasped the fact that Charlie was 
a good judge of beer I knew for certain that I 
was back in England, the foundation of whose 
greatness we all know. I walked on a little far- 
ther and overtook two men, silently smoking pipes. 
The companionship seemed to be a taciturn com- 
munion of spirits, such as Carlyle and Tennyson 
are said to have enjoyed on a certain historic eve- 
ning. But I was destined to hear strange mes- 
sages that night. As I forged ahead of them, one 
murmured : — 

"I done him down a fair treat!" 

No more! I loitered to steal the other's answer. 
But there was no answer. Two intelligences that 
exist from everlasting to everlasting had momen- 
tarily joined the path of my intelligence, and the 
unique message was that some one had been done 
down a fair treat. They disappeared into the un- 
known of Werter-road, and I was left meditating 
upon the queer coincidence of the word "beer" pre- 
ceding the word "treat." A disturbing coincidence, 
a caprice of hazard! And my mind flew back to 
a smoking-concert of my later youth, in which 



STREET TALKING 365 

"Beer, beer, glorious beer" was followed, on the 
programme, by Handel's Largo. 

«•* <•* <•* (5* 

In the early brightness of yesterday morning 
fate led me to Downing-street, which is assuredly 
the oddest street in the world (except Bow-street). 
Everything in Downing-street is significant, save 
the official residence of the Prime Minister, which, 
with its three electric bells and its absurdly inade- 
quate area steps, is merely comic. The way in 
which the vast pile of the Home Office frowns down 
upon that devoted comic house is symbolic of the 
empire of the permanent official over the elected 
of the people. It might be thought that from his 
second-floor window the Prime Minister would 
keep a stern eye on the trembling permanent of- 
ficial. But experienced haunters of Downing- 
street know that the Hessian boot is on the other 
leg. Why does that dark and grim tunnel run 
from the side of No. 10, Downing-street, into the 
spacious trackless freedom of the Horse Guards 
Parade, if it is not to facilitate the escape of Prime 
Ministers fleeing from the chicane of conspiracies? 
And how is it that if you slip out of No. 10 in 
your slippers of a morning, and toddle across to 
the foot of the steps leading to St. James's Park, 
you have instantly a view (a) of Carlton House 
Terrace and (b) of the sinister inviting water of 
St. James's Park pond? I say that the mute sig- 
nificance of things is unsettling in the highest de- 
gree. That morning a motor-brougham was 
seeking repose in Downing-street. By the motor- 



36f> PARIS NIGHTS 

brougham stood a chauffeur, and by the chauffeur 
stood a girl under a feathered hat. They were 
exchanging confidences, these two. I strolled non- 
chalantly past. The girl was saying: — 

"Look at this skirt as I've got on now. Me 
and her went 'alves in it. She was to have it one 
Sunday, and me the other. But do you suppose 
as I could get it when it come to my turn? Not 
me! Whenever I called for it she was always — " 

I heard no more. I could not decently wait. 
But I was glad the wearer had ultimately got the 
skirt. The fact was immensely significant. 



J i 






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FONTAINEBLKAU (Page 367) 



Ill 

ON THE ROAD 

The reader may remember a contrivance called 
a bicycle on which people used to move from one 
place to another. The thing is still employed by 
postmen in remote parts. We discovered a couple 
in the stable, had them polished with the electro- 
plate powder and went off on them. It seemed a 
strange freak. Equally strange was the freak of 
quitting Fontainebleau, even for three days. I 
had thought that no one ever willingly left-Fon- 
tainebleau. Everybody knows what the roads of 
France are. Smooth and straight perfection, bor- 
dered by double rows of trees. They were as- 
suredly constructed with a prevision of automobiles. 
They run in an absolutely straight line for about 
five miles, then there is a slight bend and you are 
faced with another straight line of five miles. It 
is magnificent on a motor-car at a mile a minute. 
On a bicycle it is tedious ; you never get anywhere, 
and the one fact you learn is that France consists 
of ten thousand million plane trees and a dust- 
cloud. We left the main road at the very first 
turn. As a rule, the bye-roads of France are as 
well kept as the main roads, often better, and they 
are far more amusing. But we soon got lost in a 
labyrinth of bad roads. We went back to the 

36T 



368 PARIS NIGHTS 

main roads, despite their lack of humour, and they 
were just as bad. All thei roads of the department 
which we had invaded were criminal — as criminal 
as anything in industrial Yorkshire. A person 
who had travelled only on the roads of the Loiret 
would certainly say that French roads were the 
worst in Europe. This shows the folly of general- 
ising. We held an inquisition as to these roads 
when we halted for lunch. 

"What would you?" replied the landlady. "It 
is like that!" She was a stoic philosopher. She 
said the state of the roads was due to the heavy 
loads of beetroot that pass over them, the beetroot 
being used for sugar. This seemed to us a feeble 
excuse. She also said we should find that the roads 
got worse. She then proved that in addition to 
being a great philosopher she was a great tactician. 
We implored lunch, and it was only 11:15. She 
said, with the most charming politeness, that her 
regular clients — ces messieurs — arrived at twelve, 
and not before, but that as we were "pressed" she 
would prepare us a special lunch (founded on an 
omelette) instantly. Meanwhile we could inspect 
her fowls, rabbits and guinea-pigs. Well, we in- 
spected her fowls, rabbits and guinea-pigs till 
exactly five minutes past twelve, when ces mes- 
sieurs began to arrive. The adorable creature had 
never had the least intention of serving us with a 
special lunch. Her one desire was not to hurt our 
sensitive, high-strung natures. The lunch con- 
sisted of mackerel, ham, cutlets, fromage a la 
crime, fruits and wine. I have been eating at 



ON THE ROAD 369 

French inns for years, and have not yet ceased to 
be astonished at the refined excellence of the repast 
which is offered in any little poky hole for a florin. 

«9* *?* «•* <5* 

She was right about the roads. Emphatically 
they got worse. But we did not mind, for we had 
a strong wind at our backs. The secret of happi- 
ness in such an excursion as ours is in the wind 
and in naught else. We bumped through some 
dozen villages, all exactly alike — it was a rolling 
pasture country — and then came to our first town, 
Puiseaux,, whose church with its twisted spire must 
have been destined from its beginning to go on to 
a picture post card. And having taught the lead- 
ing business house of Puiseaux how to brew tea, 
we took to the wind again, and were soon in Eng- 
land; that is to say, we might have been in England, 
judging by the hedges and ditches and the capri- 
ciousness of the road's direction, and the little oc- 
casional orchards, bridges and streams. This was 
not the hedgeless, severe landscape of Gaul — not 
a bit! Only the ancient farmhouses and the cha- 
teaux guarded by double pairs of round towers 
reminded us that we were not in Shropshire. The 
wind blew us in no time to within sight of the 
distant lofty spire of the great church of Pithiviers, 
and after staring at it during six kilometres, we 
ran down into a green hollow and up into the 
masonry of Pithiviers, where the first spectacle we 
saw was a dog racing towards the church with a 
huge rat in his mouth. Pithiviers is one of the 
important towns of the department. It demands 



370 PARIS NIGHTS 

and receives respect. It has six cafes in its pic- 
turesque market square, and it specialises in lark 
patties. What on earth led Pithiviers to special- 
ise in lark patties I cannot imagine. But it does. 
It is revered for its lark patties, which are on view 
everywhere. We are probably the only persons 
who have spent a night in Pithiviers without par- 
taking of lark patties. We went into the hotel 
and at the end of the hall saw three maids sewing 
in the linen-room — a pleasing French sight — and, 
in a glass case, specimens of lark patties. We 
steadily and consistently refused lark pat- 
ties. Still we did not starve. Not to men- 
tion lark patties, our two-and-tenpenny dinner 
comprised soup, boiled beef, carrots, turnips, 
gnocclii, fowl, beans, leg of mutton, cherries, straw- 
berries and minor details. During this eternal 
meal, a man with a bag came vociferously into the 
salle a manger. He was selling the next day's 
morning paper! Chicago could not surpass that! 
Largely owing to the propinquity and obstinacy 
of the striking clock of the great church I arose 
at 6 a. m. The market was already in progress. 
I spoke withj an official about the clock, but I could 
not make him see that I had got up in the middle 
of the night. In spite of my estimate of his clock, 
he good-naturedly promised me much better roads. 
And the promise was fulfilled. But we did not 
mind. For now the strong wind was against us. 
This altered all our relations with the universe, and 
transformed us into impolite, nagging pessimists; 
previously we had been truly delightful people. 




THE LITTLE RIVER FUSAIN {Page 371) 



ON THE ROAD 371 

All that day till tea-time we grumbled over a good 
road that wound its way through a gigantic wheat- 
field. True that sometimes the wheat was oats, or 
even a pine plantation; but, broadly speaking, the 
wheat was all wheat, and the vast heaving sea of it 
rolled up to the very sides of the road under our 
laggard wheels. And it was all right, and it was all 
being cut with two-horse McCormick reapers. We 
actually saw hundreds of McCormick reapers. 
Near and far, on all the horizons, we could detect 
the slow-revolving paddle of the McCormick 
reaper. And at least we reached Chateau Landon, 
against the walls of which huge waves of wheat 
were breaking. Chateau Landon was our destina- 
tion. We meant to discover it and we did. 

St jl £ <t 

Chateau Landon is one of the most picturesque 
towns in France; but, as the landlady of the Red 
Hat said to us, "no one has yet known how to 
make come messieurs, the tourists." I should 
say that (except Carcassone, of course) Vezelay, 
in the Avalonnais, is perhaps the most picturesque 
town in all France. Chateau Landon comes near 
it, and is much easier to get at. On one side it 
rises straight up in a tremendous sheer escarpment 
out of the little river Fusain, in which the entire 
town washes its clothes. The view of the city 
from the wooded and murmurous valley is genu- 
inely remarkable, and the most striking feature of 
the view is the feudal castle which soars with its 
terrific buttresses out of a thick mass of trees. 
Few more perfect relics of feudalism than this for- 



372 PARIS NIGHTS 

midable building can exist anywhere. It will soon 
celebrate its thousandth birthday. In putting it to 
the uses of a home for the poor (Asile de St. Sev- 
erin) the townsmen cannot be said to have dishon- 
oured its old age. You climb up out of the river 
by granite steps cut into the escarpment and find 
yourself all of a sudden in the market square, which 
looks over a precipice. Everybody is waiting to 
relate to you the annals of the town since the be- 
ginning of history: how it had its own mint, and 
how the palace of the Mint still stands ; how many 
an early Louis lived in the town, making laws and 
dispensing justice; how Louis le Gros put himself 
to the trouble of being buried in the cathedral there ; 
and how the middlemen come from Fontainebleau 
to buy game at the market. We sought the tomb 
in the cathedral, but found nothing of interest there 
save a stout and merry priest instructing a class of 
young girls in the aisle. However, we did buy a 
pair of fowls in the market for 4s. and carried them 
at our saddles, all the way back to Fontainebleau. 
The landlady of the Red Hat asked us whether her 
city was not wondrous? We said it was. She 
asked us whether we should come again? We said 
we should. She asked us whether we could do any- 
thing to spread the fame of her wondrous town? 
We said we would do what we could. 

To reach Fontainebleau it was necessary to pass 
through another ancient town which we have long 
loved, largely on account of Balzac, to wit, Ne- 
mours. After Chateau Landon, Nemours did 
not seem to be quite the exquisite survival that we 



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ASILE DE ST. SEYERIN {Page 371) 



ON THE ROAD 373 

had thought. It had almost a modern look. Thus 
on the afternoon of the third day we came to Fon- 
tainebleau again. And there was no wind at all. 
We had covered a prodigious number of miles, 
about as many as a fair automobile would swallow, 
up in two hours ; in fact, eighty. 



IV 

A TRAIN 

At the present moment probably the dearest bed 
of its size in the world is that to be obtained on the 
Calais-Mediterranean express, which leaves Calais 
at 1.05 every afternoon and gets to Monte Carlo at 
9.39 the next morning. This bed costs you be- 
tween £4s and £5 if you take it from Calais, and 
between £3 and £4 if you take it from Paris [(as 
I did), in addition to the first-class fare (no baga- 
telle that, either!), and, of course, in addition to 
your food. Why people should make such a ter- 
rific fuss about this train I don't know. It isn't 
the fastest train between Paris and Marseilles, be- 
cause, though it beats almost every other train by 
nearly an hour, there is, in February, just one train 
that beats it — by one minute.* And after Mar- 
seilles it is slow. And as for comfort, well, Ameri- 
cans aver that it "don't cut much ice, anyway" 
(this is the sort of elegant diction you hear on it), 
seeing that it doesn't even comprise a drawing- 
room car. Except when you are eating, you must 
remain boxed up in a compartment decidedly not 
as roomy as a plain, common, ordinary, decent 
Anglo-Saxon first-class compartment between 
Manchester and Liverpool. 

*In 1904. 

374 















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CHATEAU LANDON (Po(/e 37.2,1 



A TRAIN 375 

However, it is the train of trains, outside the 
Siberian express, and the Chicago and Empire 
City Vestibule Flyer, Limited, and if decorations, 
silver, rare woods, plush, silk, satin, springs, cut- 
flowers, and white-gloved attendants will make a 
crack train, the International Sleeping Car Com- 
pany (that bumptious but still useful association 
for the aggrandisement of railway directors) has 
made one. You enter this train with awe, for 
you know that in entering you enrol yourself once 
and for ever among the elite. You know that no- 
body in Europe can go one better. For just as the 
whole of the Riviera coast has been finally special- 
ised into a winter playground for the rich idlers, 
dilettanti, hypochondriacs, and invalids of two or 
three continents, and into a field of manoeuvres for 
the always-accompanying gilded riff-raff and odal- 
isques, so that train is a final instance of the spe- 
cialisation of transit to suit the needs of the afore- 
said plutocrats and adventurers. And whether 
you count yourself a plutocrat or an adventurer, 
you are correct, doing the correct thing, and prov- 
ing every minute that money is no object, and thus 
realising the ideal of the age. 

£• t5* £* *7* 

French railway platforms are so low that in the 
vast and resounding Gare de Lyon when the ma- 
chine rolled magnificently in I was obliged to look 
up to it, whether I wanted to or not; and so I 
looked up reverently. The first human being that 
descended from it was an African ; not a negro, but 
something nobler. He was a very big man, with a 



376 PARIS NIGHTS 

distinguished mien, and he wore the uniform, in- 
cluding the white gloves, of the dining-car staff. 
Now, I had learnt from previous excursions in this 
gipsy-van of the elite that the proper thing to do 
aboard it is to display a keen interest in your stom- 
ach. So I approached the African and demanded 
the hour of dinner. He enveloped me in a glance 
of courteous but cold and distant disdain, and for 
quite five seconds, as he gazed silently down at me 
|(I am 5ft.-8f in.) , he must have been saying to him- 
self: "Here's another of 'em." I felt inclined to 
explain to him, as the reporter explained to the re- 
vivalist who inquired about his soul, that I was on 
the Press, and therefore not to be confused with the 
general elite. But I said nothing. I decided that 
if I told him that I worked as hard as he did he 
would probably take me for a liar as well as a plu- 
tocratic nincompoop. 

Then the train went off, carrying its cargo of 
human parcels all wrapped up in pretty cloths and 
securely tied with tapes and things, and plunged 
with its glitter and meretricious flash down through 
the dark central quietudes of France. I must say 
that as I wandered about its shaking corridors, 
looking at faces and observing the deleterious ef- 
fects of idleness, money, seasickness, lack of imag- 
ination, and other influences, I was impressed, 
nevertheless, by the bright gaudiness of the train's 
whole entity. It isn't called a train de luxe; it is 
called a train de grand luxe; and though the ar- 
tistic taste displayed throughout is uniformly de- 
plorable, still it deserves the full epithet. As an 



A TRAIN 377 

example of ostentation, of an end aimed at and 
achieved, it will pass muster. And, lost in one of 
those profound meditations upon life and death 
and luxury which even the worst novelists must 
from time to time indulge in, I forgot everything 
save the idea of the significance of the train rush- 
ing, so complete and so self-contained, through un- 
known and uncared-for darkness. For me the 
train might have been whizzing at large through 
the world as the earth whizzes at large through 
space. Then that African came along and asserted 
with frigid politeness that dinner was ready. 

c5* (5* <?* e?* 

And in the highly-decorated dining-car, where 
vines grew all up the walls, and the table-lamps 
were electric bulbs enshrined in the metallic curves 
of the art nouveau, and the fine cut flowers had 
probably been brought up from Grasse that morn- 
ing, it happened that the African himself handed 
me the menu and waited on me. And when he 
arrived balancing the elaborate silver "contrap- 
tion" containing ninety-nine varieties of hors- 
d'oeuvres, but not the particular variety I wanted, 
I determined that I would enter the lists with him. 
And, catching his eye, I said with frigid politeness : 

N'y a-t-il pas* de sardines?" 

He restrained himself for his usual five seconds, 
and then he replied, with a politeness compared to 
which mine was sultry : 

"Non, monsieur/' 

And he went on to say (without speaking, but 
with his eyes, arms, legs, forehead, and spinal col- 



378 PAKIS NIGHTS 

iimn) : "Miserable European, parcel, poltroon, 
idler, degenerate, here I offer you ninety-and-nine 
hors d'ceuvres, and you want the hundredth! You, 
living your unnatural and despicable existence! 
If I cared sufficiently I could kill every man on 
the train, but I don't care sufficiently! Have the 
goodness not to misinterpret my politeness, and 
take this Lyons sausage, and let me hear no more 
about sardines." 

Hence I took the sausage and obediently ate it. 
I gave him best. Among the few men that I re- 
spected on that train were the engine-driver, out 
there in the nocturnal cold, with our lives in his 
pocket, and that African. He really could have 
killed any of us. I may never see him again. His 
circle of eternal energy just touched mine at the 
point where a tin of sardines ought to have been 
but was not. He was emphatically a man. He 
had the gestures and carriage of a monarch. Per- 
haps he was one, de jure, somewhere in the neigh- 
bourhood of Timbuctoo. For practical European, 
Riviera, plutocratic purposes he was a coloured 
waiter in the service of the International Sleeping 
Car Company. 



V 



ANOTHER TRAIN 



After six hours' continuous sleep, I felt full of 
energy and joy. There were no servants to sad- 
den by their incompetence; so I got up and made 
the tea and prepared the baths, and did many sim- 
ple domestic things, the doing of which personally 
is the beginning of "the solution of the servant 
problem," so much talked about. Shall we catch 
the 9.25 fast or the 9.50 slow? Only my watch was 
going among all the clocks and watches in the flat. 
I looked at it from time to time, fighting against 
the instinct to hurry, the instinct to beat that one 
tiny watch in its struggle against me. Just when 
I was quite ready, I had to button a corsage with 
ten thousand buttons — toy buttons like sago, that 
must be persuaded into invisible nooses of thread. 
I turned off the gas at the meter and the electricity 
at the meter, and glanced 'round finally at the little 
museum of furniture, pictures, and prints that was 
nearly all I had to show in the way of spoils after 
forty years of living and twenty-five years of sharp- 
shooting. I picked up the valise, and we went out 
on the staircase. I locked and double locked the 
door. [(Instinct of property.) 1 At the concierge's 
lodge a head stuck itself out and offered the "Mer- 
cure de France," which had just come. Strange 



379 



380 PARIS NIGHTS 

bow my pleasure in receiving new numbers never 
wanes! I shoved it into my left-hand pocket; in 
my right-band pocket a new book was already re- 
posing. 

«?• J* «?* <?* 

Out into the street, and though we had been up 
for an hour and a half, we were now for the first 
time in the light of day! Mist! It would proba- 
bly be called "pearly" by some novelists; but it was 
like blue mousseline — diaphanous as a dancer's 
skirt. The damp air had the astringent, nipping 
quality that is so marked in November — like a 
friendly dog pretending to bite you. Pavements 
drying. The coal merchant's opposite was not yet 
open. The sight of his closed' shutters pleased me ; 
I owed him forty francs, and my pride might have 
forced me to pay him on the spot had I caught his 
eye. We met a cab instantly. The driver, a mid- 
dle-aged parent, was in that state of waking up in 
which ideas have to push themselves into the brain. 
"Where?" he asked mechanically, after I had di- 
rected him, but before I could repeat the direction 
the idea had reached his brain, and he nodded. 
This driver was no ordinary man, for instead of 
taking the narrow, blocked streets, which form the 
shortest route, like the absurd 99 per cent, of driv- 
ers, he aimed straight for the grand boulevard, and 
was not delayed once by traffic in the whole jour- 
ney. More pleasure in driving through the city as 
it woke ! It was ugly, dirty — look at the dirty shirt 
of the waiter rubbing the door handles of the fash- 
ionable restaurant! — but it was refreshed. And 



ANOTHER TRAIN 381 

the friendly dog kept on biting. Scarcely any mo- 
tor-cars — all the chauffeurs were yet asleep — but 
the tram-cars were gliding in curves over the muddy 
wood, and the three horses in each omnibus had 
their early magnificent willingness of action, and 
the vegetable hawkers, old men and women, were 
earnestly pushing their barrows along in financial 
anxiety; their heads, as they pushed, were always 
much in advance of their feet. They moved for- 
ward with heedless fatalism; if we collided with 
them and spilled cauliflowers, so much the worse! 

We reached the station, whose blue mousseline 
had evaporated as we approached it, half an hour 
too soon. A good horse, no stoppages, and the rec- 
ord had been lowered, and the driver had earned 
two francs in twenty-five minutes! Before the 
Revolution he would have had to pay a franc and 
a half of it in assorted taxes. Thirty minutes in a 
vast station, and nothing to do. We examined the 
platform signs. There was a train for Marseilles 
and Monte Carlo at 9.00 and another train for Mar- 
seilles at 9.15. Then ours at 9.25. Sometimes I 
go south by the "Cote d'Azur," so this morning I 
must inspect it, owning it. Very few people; a 
short, trying-to-be-proud train. The cook was 
busy in the kitchen of the restaurant-car — what 
filth and smell! Separated from him only by a 
partition were the flower-adorned white tables. 
On the platform the officials of the train, some in 
new uniforms, strolled and conversed. A young 
Frenchman dressed in the height of English fash- 
ion, with a fine-bred pink-under-white fox ter- 



382 PARIS NIGHTS 

rier, attracted my notice. He guessed it; became 
self-conscious, bridled, and called sportsmannishly 
to the dog. His recognition of his own vital 
existence had forced him into some action. He 
knew I was English, and that, therefore, I knew 
all about dogs. He made the dog jump into the 
car, but the animal hadn't enough sense to jump 
in without impatient and violent help from behind. 
I never cared to have my dogs too well-bred, lest 
they should be as handsome and as silly as the 
scions of ancient families. This dog's master was 
really a beautiful example of perfect masculine 
dressing. His cap, the length of his trousers, the 
"roll" of the collar of his jacket — perfect! Yes, it 
is agreeable to see a faultless achievement. Not a 
woman on the train to compare to him! It is a 
fact that men are always at their sartorial best 
when travelling ; they then put on gay colours, and 
give themselves a certain licence. . . . The 
train seemed to go off while no one was looking ; no 
whistle, no waving of flags. It crept out. But to 
the minute. . . . 

c5* e5* t?* i5* 

It is astounding the lively joy I find in staring at 
a railway bookstall. Men came up, threw down a 
sou, snatched a paper, and departed; scores of 
them; but I remained, staring, like a ploughman, 
vaguely. . . . 

I was a quarter of an hour in buying the "Fig- 
aro." What decided me was the Saturday lit- 
erary supplement. We mounted into our train 
before its toilette was finished. It smelt nice and 



ANOTHER TRAIN 383 

damp. We had a compartment to ourselves. X. 
had one seat, I another, the "Mercure de France" 
a third, the "Figaro" a fourth, and the valise a 
fifth. Male travellers passed along the corridor 
and examined us with secret interest, but exter- 
nally ferocious and damnatory. Outside were two 
little Frenchmen of employes, palefaces, with short, 
straggly beards. One yawned suddenly, and 
then said something that the other smiled at. 
What diverts me is to detect the domestic man 
everywhere beneath the official, beneath the mere 
unit. I never see a porter without giving him a 
hearth and home, and worries, and a hasty break- 
fast. Then the train went, without warning, like 
the other, silently. I did not pick up my newspa- 
j)er nor my magazine at once, nor take the new 
book out of my pocket. I felt so well, so full of 
potential energy. . . . and the friendly dog 
was still biting ... I wanted to bathe deep 
in my consciousness of being alive . . . Then 
I read unpublished letters of de Maupassant, and 
a story by Matilde Serao and memoirs of Ernest 
31um, and my new book. What pleasure ! After 
all what joy I had in life! Is it not remarkable 
that so simple a mechanism as print, for the trans- 
mission of thought, can work so successfully! 

At Melun there were teams of oxen, with the 
yoke on their foreheads, in the shunting-yard. 
Quaint, piquant, collusion of different centuries! 
And Melun, what a charming provincial town — to 
look at and pass on ! I would not think of its hard 
narrowness, nor of its brewery. . . . 



384 PARIS NIGHTS 

The landscape shed its mousseline, and day really 
began. Brilliant sunshine. We arrived. Sud- 
denly I felt tired. I wished to sleep. I no longer 
tingled with the joy of life. I only remembered, 
rather sadly, that half an hour ago I had been a 
glorious and proud being. 



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